The Ultimate Drawback To Being a Vegetable Vendor in Mumbai

mage: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I never buy vegetables from supermarkets. I feel they came out of the cold storage and are in less than healthy condition so they definitely are not fit enough to go into my body.


Besides, I am helping the unorganised sector - I like fresh vegetables, I like a bargain, I like befriending the vendors because they are full of brilliant recipe ideas. Well, not all, but most of them are. And once they know you are loyal, they give you the coriander and curry leaves and ginger and lemon for free.


Good thing for me.


My brother, as a young boy, used to spend hours at the potato basket, with a ladle and stir them around. Evidently, he was copying what my mother was doing at a real gas over a real vessel just behind him - we used to think he might become a chef. He surprised us by saying he wanted to be a vegetable vendor. I could understand that, I myself have always loved a fresh display of colourful edibles at the market. And my parents, being the ideal kind that Khalil Gibran describes in 'The Prophet' were quite alright with him becoming a vegetable vendor - only one condition - become the best vegetable vendor. You cannot be a Banerjee and be less than amazing at whatever you do, was the family motto. My brother thought it was an okay condition and declared himself at the tender of age of four.


But I digress...the point to telling you my brother's secret ambitions (which at the moment involve getting into an engineering college and engineering his own master computer...so much changes by the time you are 18, no?), was to draw your attention to the acutely distressing disadvantage you face if YOU become a vegetable vendor. Especially in Mumbai.

The vendors on the roadsides, have no legal permit to be there and sell their veggies and fruits - I know that ideally, they should be getting their permits but I doubt that if they go the legal way, they will ever come anywhere close to really selling much on the road, forget about turning into a business. But the residents want them, the vendors needs the residents and we both survive in great camaraderie, right next to each other. Its almost part of the city culture. And I wish for them, that the municipal corporation made it easier for them to get their permits.

There I was, telling the guy to pack me Pau Kilo (250 gms) of baby potatoes when a boy came shouting.


"Bhago! Gaadi aayi!" (Run, the vehicle has come!)


How odd, I thought. The place is full of vehicles everyday. What's special today? I peeked, on tiptoe, to catch a glimpse of some monster truck. My eyes fell on the municipality towing van, armed with police personnel. Everything fell into place. The municipality van was here and all these vendors, including the fruit seller, the CD seller, the 'chhipkali ka tel' seller, the ear cleaner, the sandwich wallah AND the gola-guy, were running pell-mell in various directions. The guy I had bought potatoes from hurriedly stuffed my purchase into my green paper bag (reusable-recyclable) and said he cannot pack the big potatoes - no time for it now. He packed off his huge cart and ran off.


The flower seller also rattled off, dropping a couple of gerberas on the way.


I still had to buy a watermelon. The fruit seller told me that I should wait until tomorrow - my 40 bucks of business was not worth losing a cart and a load that cost him 4k. Fair enough.


You know the odd part. They were all, uniformly, nervous, excited and laughing their heads off. Like there was some sort of an internal joke. I was clueless, a bit astonished and trudged back home with whatever I had managed to buy. I found the vegetable vendor a couple of minutes later, deep in the alleyways of the township I live in, where no shops are allowed on the pavements. He was walking off in a huff with his cart, vegetables loaded and gleaming, a couple of residents hurriedly buying a kilo of tomato here, a bunch of spinach there.


I asked him why he was here, inside the township.


"I am not going to sell here madam but people are coming to buy so I will give them what they want and go. The van isn't allowed inside the township either so I came here to save my cart."


Poor guy. However, he was beaming too.


" Aap has kyun rahe ho lekin?" (But why are you smiling?) I enquired.


"Arre madam, it's just a break from routine for us. A moment to laugh and find out who got caught later, when we return. I think the CD wallah got caught, good for him, stupid fellow."


Indeed. And I could not agree more with him. That life lesson, then, would be the advantage, hidden in the midst of the disadvantage of routinely getting chased down by the establishment.