The hawker

 

Kala walks, hawks and talks like an expert vegetable seller now. But if you make a list of their success rank, he comes last. There are very serious quality issues about his vegetables. ‘But how will I purchase better quality if you don’t buy these from me, giving me some profit so that with the money I can get the premium class,’ he says. Well, he has a point here and makes some sense in this. To help people to give him more profit he generally overprices his substandard veggies.

He is from the village itself and more successful ones are migrant Biharis who visit from the town. So he brings personal touch in the bargain. He shouts people’s names also after the list of his items. He would shout your name for ten days at a stretch. If you never even say ‘no’ and stay hidden in your house, it doesn’t affect him. The next day he would call you with the same sweetness. He called me for ten days and I kept hiding. Finally my own conscience reproached me and I came out of my hole like a crab from the seaside rocks. I could see his triumph for having drawn me out. He gave me his severely substandard bananas at eighty rupees per dozen. At the city you get very good ones at sixty rupees only. But then you have to pay extra for being specially addressed by your name by a hawker.

His vegetable-hawking song went like this: aloo,  piyaj, tamatar,  bhindi, tori, ghiya, kheera ... suppee (this one for my name Sufi). It sounds like he’s selling suppee along with the vegetables.