The fallen
tomato cart I pass through this very intersection every morning with so much ease.
Today, the pace is skewed. There is a sense of disarray as motorists try
to
push past each other through the traffic light. The light here always
tests their agility because if you miss the green, you have to wait for
another three minutes before it lets you go past again. Those three
minutes become eternity for an otherwise time-insensitive nation on the
move. Today, there is a sense of chaos here. People are honking, skirting
each other and rushing past. I look out of my window to seek the reason.
It is not difficult to find because it is lying strewn all over the
place.
A tomato
seller's cart has overturned. There are tomatoes everywhere
and the rushing motorists are making pulp of it. The man is trying to get
his cart back on its four rickety wheels and a few passersby are picki ng
up what they can in an attempt to save him total loss. Though symbolic in
the larger scheme of things, it is not a substantive gesture. His
business for the
day is over.
The way this man's economics works is very simple. There is a money
lender who lends him money for just one day, at an interest rate of Rs 10
per day per Rs 100 lent. With the money, he wakes up at 4 am to go to the
wholesale market for vegetables. He returns, pushing his cart a good five
miles, and by 7 am when the locality wakes up, he is ready to sell his
day's merchandise. By the end of the morning, some of it remains unsold.
This his wife sells by the afternoon and takes home the remainder, which
becomes part of his meal. With the day's proceeds, he returns the
interest to the money lender and goes back to the routine the next day.
If he does not sell for a day, his chain breaks.
Where does he go from here? He goes back to the money lender, raises
capital at an even more penal interest and gets back on his feet. This is
not the only time that destiny has upset his tomato cart. This happens to
him at least six times every year. Once he returned with a loaded cart of
ripe tomatoes and it rained heavily for the next three days. No one came
to the market and his stock rotted in front of his own eyes. Another
time, instead of the weather, it was a political rally that snowballed
into a confrontation between two rival groups and the locality closed
down. And he is not alone in this game of extraneous factors that seize
not only his business but also his
life. He sees this
happen to the
"gol-gappa" seller, the peanut seller and the "vada pao" seller all the
time. When their product does not sell, it just turns soggy. Sometimes
they eat some of it. But how much of that stuff can you eat by yourself ?
So, they just give away some and there is always that one time when they
have to simply throw it away.
Away from the street-vendor selling perishable commodity with little or
no life support system, the corporate world is an altogether different
place. Here we have some of the most educated people in the country. We
don the best garbs. We do not have to push carts; our carts push us. We
have our salary, perquisites, bonuses, stock options, gratuities,
pensions and our medical insurance and the group accident benefit
schemes. Yet, all the while, we worry about our risks and think about our
professional insecurity. We wonder, what would happen if the company
shifted offices to another city? What would happen if the department
closed down? What would happen if you were to take maternity leave and
the temporary substitute delivered better work than you did? What would
happen if the product line you are dealing with simply failed? In any of
those eventualities, the worst that could happen would still be a lot
less than having to see your cartful of tomatoes getting pulped under the
screeching wheels of absolute strangers who have nothing personal against
you.
All too often we exaggerate our risks. We keep justifying our
professional conctill they trap us in their vicious downward spiral.
Devoid of education, sophisticated reasoning and any financial safety
net, the man with the cart is often able to deal with life much better
than many of us. Is it time to look out of the window, into the eyes of
that man to ask him, where does he get it from? In his simple stoicism,
is probably, our lost resilience.
More reviews about the mid-day