quidnovis61

Today I ditched fancy-nancy Khan Market. I went instead to the tiny “un-glamorous” vegetable shop behind the house thru a picturesque gully on to a road with life tumbling out of every corner… entrepreneurship and one-man/family businesses to shame any European country… The gully (alley) is teeming with life. People live there in tiny brick-cement houses painted in garish greens and loud blues with paint spilling over on to the ground in great gashes. Fairy lights adorn the walls that I am sure blink in various hues when darkness falls.  

A few little girls of 5 or 6 years play in the front between the “houses” in the gully. They have a worn skipping rope and seem to have loads of fun with it, jumping in and hopping out with squeals of delight - or sighs as they get caught in the twirling rope.

Good Moooornning Aunty they cry in unison when they see me coming.

Good morning girls! I say. Have you been to school today?

Yes Aunty they say again in unison.

Very good girls, I say. Have you done your homework?

No Aunty, all of them in same high pitched voices.

Ok I say, play for a bit now but then do your home work Ok?

Yes Aunty ok! A

nd I say Bye now!

And they all say Byeeee Aunty and wave.

I go on walking with a smile on my lips and their voices ringing in my ears. 

The dhobi walla (washerman) in the corner is busy washing clothes, thrashing them nearly threadbare on a slab of stone…dare any germ stay alive after that vicious beating? A young boy with a cycle cart peels oranges. He has an ancient “juicer” with a hand crank which I am sure is a legacy from the British Raj. As he peels the oranges for fresh juice and waits for his customers he hums a tune to himself. I am sure it’s from the latest Bollywood SRK-film. (Shah Rukh Khan is known as SRK in India). The warm sunny tranquil morning is filled with the tangy smell of oranges and my mouth involuntarily starts to water… 

Then I meet Sushila.

She is sitting on a very low rough wooden stool wearing a lovely bright blue sari embroidered with gold, her back to the sun, her face shielded from the rays. She has a charpoy (the traditional rope bed woven on four wooden legs) by her side. A moss-green satin cloth covers it and on top of it is strewn wheat. Golden dusky yellow wheat. The explosion of colours takes my breath away.

I stop and smile at her. I ask her what she is doing. She has got a whole sack of wheat delivered to her, she says. She spreads them on the charpoy to “kill the germs” in the warm sunshine. She takes a handful at a time on a stainless steel plate and cleans them – sorting sorting sorting with great dexterity. She throws away the tiny stones that I can barely see, that get in the wheat when threshed. When she has cleaned it, it is re-packed and sent away “somewhere” (she didn’t know where) to be ground into flour, put in packets and sold in the shops.

I told her I had never seen this. And she said You don’t live in Hindusthan (India). How will you see such things? I have not seen anything of your outside-country (bahar ka desh/foreign country).We talked amiably and laughed. Where are you going, she asked me? I said I was going to buy some vegetables in the shop on the road. Yes he is good she said. We parted. 

In the “compound” next to her, under shady trees and a lovely clean courtyard are two young women sitting on their haunches. They are sisters-in-law.

They have a similar charpoy of wheat warming in the sun but they are sitting and sorting methi and coriander leaves talking in low tones and laughing.

I greet them and they tell me what they are doing, how to preserve the herbs, how long it will last and so on. We talk a bit. They laugh (very kindly) at my coriander-ignorance and astonishment. How can an Indian woman NOT know about such things, I am sure they are musing. We part company. 

I went past the barber in the corner waiting for customers, the gruesome tools of his trade neatly put on a rickety ledge on the wall, a plywood chair cushioned in white plastic. A pock marked mirror that has surely seen better days hangs lopsided on a rusty nail on the wall. He half smiled in greeting, a bit unsure.

By the vegetable shop is a husband-and-wife team. They were making daal (lentil soup), cabbage and rice. Later she will also make fried noodles. There will be quite a crowd in this street-side restaurant in a couple of hours. I have seen it. It smells tantalizingly good…How I wish I could taste...I would love to… but with a clinically squeaky-clean Swedish stomach this would be disastrous. Alas…

The vegetable shop owner greeted me with familiarity. I have been there thrice before… so he knows me.

Good Morning Memsahab! Good morning I say… What do you need today Memsahab? He gives me a cane tray so I may choose my veggies from his racks. I really don’t have that much to buy today but I take 500gm onions, 500 gms tomatoes, a packet of mushrooms, a small head of cauliflower, a papaya (approx 950 gms) and say Thank you, that’s all for today. And he counts…it is easy maths as they are all Rs10/ kg or Rs 20/kg and so on (even I could do it) …The grand total comes to INR 88.00 He puts in (for FREE!!) a few bundles of coriander leaves and a huge handful of chillies. I protest saying I don’t eat chillies, no point giving me chillies! He lessens the amount to half and says, Take a little bit with you memsahab! It will make your daal taste very good. I say, Oh, ok then….thank you!

I pop in at his neighbours’ – Darshan Store. It is a mini store with mega things. Every inch of his shelves are crammed with the most astonishing things. I buy, on an impulse Haldiram’s Khatta Meetha snacks, a small packet for INR 10.00 for my afternoon tea and a loaf of Britannia bread.

On my way back the barber has a customer in the chair and one waiting on the dusty ground. He is busy shaving his customer with a dreadful looking scalpel… I shudder, glad to be a woman.

Sushila sees me coming and smiles a beautiful smile of pearly white teeth.

So what did you buy? Did you get all you needed?

Yes I said, I did! I bought onions and cauliflower and tomatoes! Shall I get you a chair, do you want to sit in the sun? I have a “proper chair” inside. You dont have to sit on a low stool.

I felt a lump in my throat… I would have loved to sit there and talk to this kind young woman laboriously happily working with minute particles of stones in the comfortable sun. But I told her I had to go as my Uncle would get worried if I didn’t come home on time (which was the absolute truth) and how will lunch get ready, Sushila, if all the onions are in my bag here? We laughed. I said Bye and that she should remain safe and happy. I would see her again in 3 months I said. You come anytime. I am right here, she said.

It was like a blessing. 

Next time I buy a gaily coloured packet of rye flour (atta) in the super market I will think of Sushila in a bright blue sari who kindly and painstakingly cleaned it, sitting in the delightful winter sun in an old forgotten alley in Delhi, laughing and talking. Sharing her life with me...

Today I got more than just a string bag full of vegetables. 

I got blessed.

Signing off for now.

C.S!
(Cresat Scientia/ May knowledge grow/Må kunskapen växa)