Bhav / one store, Mumbai
On 4 October 2026, at 10:20 in the morning, three of the seven things on an ordinary Mumbai list were not on this shelf. What was there cost ₹530. The list, whole, was ₹1,119.
4 of 7 on the shelf — 3 recorded out of stock
The shelf at its last look, 10:20. The list is all seven shelf tags, including the three packs that were gone; the shelf total is only what could be bought. Empty slots are recorded OUT_OF_STOCK. A missing observation would be fog, never a gap.
The archive
Forty days out of sixty-three.
This was not a rare day. In the 63 days from 29 August to 30 October 2026, all seven listed packs were on the shelf on 23. 39 of the other 40 carried at least one recorded stockout. On the fortieth, one pack was not observed at all — counted as absent, never as out of stock.
A price is drawn only where the archive has one. On 19 October the besan row is absent, so the line stops: the six-line total that day is not a cheap seven-line day, and it is not drawn as one. Not one of the 62 observed days fell under the ₹1,000 rule. Drag the brass head along the rail, or focus it and use ← →.
The record
Only a stamp may make a claim.
DMart's vocabulary has three recorded states — IN_STOCK, OUT_OF_STOCK, NOT_LISTED — and the archive adds a fourth thing: a day with no row at all. Across these 29 SKUs and 63 days there are 1,825 recorded SKU-days: 1,664 in stock, 161 out of stock, and not one NOT_LISTED. Two candidate rows are absent; the only one in the seven-line list is besan on 19 October.
A stockout is a record: someone looked, and the pack was gone. A missing row is not a record of anything — it is fog, an unlooked-at shelf — and it never gets a ticket, a price or a stamp.
Every field above is read from the archive. Nothing is inferred: a state is what DMart recorded, and a missing row is the absence of a record.
Your turn
Work the shelf.
Three changes put every missing thing back. The basket is then ₹1,020 — complete, and ₹20 over a ₹1,000 budget. A fourth change, to something that was never missing, is what makes it affordable. The brass wire is what the week may cost; the notched gate is how much of the list you will let change. The shelf answers with what it has, never with what it wishes it had.
drag the counterweight — or focus it and use ← →
drag the pawl along the rack — or focus it and use ← →
The fourth change
The expensive part was never missing.
The first three changes fill the gaps and save ₹99 against the listed packs. The fourth — Tata Tea Gold ₹246 to Tata Agni ₹130 — saves ₹116, more than all three gap-fills together. Allowing two more changes only reaches ₹894: they buy ₹8 and then ₹2.
Four changes are enough: four substitutions, and three lines bought exactly as written. Two more would buy ₹10, and stop.
One more change saves ₹8; two save ₹10.
₹116saved by the one change that filled no gap
₹215 between the list and the basket. ₹116 of it comes from a pack that was never out of stock.
The limit
One shelf, on the record.
Every price here is a recorded shelf tag at one DMart store in Powai, taken from Bhav's read-only price archive at the last observation of each day, Asia/Kolkata. Stock states are DMart's own IN_STOCK and OUT_OF_STOCK. A missing row means not observed — a fourth thing, shown as fog, never as an empty shelf. One day in the seven-line list has such a slot, and it is not counted as a stockout. No other retailer is used, because no other Mumbai store in this archive sits in the same pincode.
- Store observations
- 350,588
- Days in the archive
- 63
- Days with all seven present
- 23
- Days with a recorded stockout
- 39
- Days with a row missing
- 1
- Basket SKUs
- 29
- Basket observations
- 3,540
- Archive as of
- 31 Oct 2026
- Today, excluded
- partial
It can say what was on this shelf, at the last look, and what it cost. It cannot say why anything was missing, what another shop or city had, what tomorrow will bring, or whether a substitute tasted right. It is a record, not a forecast, and not a recommendation.
The shelf ends here. The list does not.