I could say that I had another parathawala moment. But it was much more than that, much more subtle and much more long drawn. Well, I did have a parathawala moment but that was different. But let’s first get it out of the way anyways.
So, It was raining that day and I had recently started going to client’s offshore captive office these days. That office is in Whitefield and I stay in Indiranagar, both places are around 20 kms apart. My office is in Electronics City which is 20 kms away too, but I used to come and go in an office bus and used to sleep along the way both times, so I really didn’t mind the distance. Or maybe I did but soon I got used to it, like we humans get used to everything we are in. Anyways back to that day, that day it was raining. I stood in the rain for a while to catch the public bus from my office back to the bus stop near my house. The bus was crowded so I didn’t get a seat and as it always happens the traffic was terrible, because it was raining. So I was drenched, standing in the bus and was stuck in it for an hour and a half and getting more pissed off by the minute. I got down at the stop, started running in the rain towards the house in the rain, mad at the whole world. I was mad at the weather for raining, mad at the Bangalore traffic for being bad like it is, mad at office people to ask me to go to client office for no good reason, but I was mad at myself the most for acquiescing to their demand and for not having a cushy job where I could come and go in an office car, wearing a nice suit. If any of these things had been different I wouldn’t be in the rain wet and tired and unrewarded. As I was running along the sidewalk I caught someone looking angrier than me on the sidewalk from the corner of my eye.
He was a tall thin guy with a light stubble on his face, wearing a light colored non-descript shirt that most Indians wear while going to work, holding an umbrella. His eyes were darting here and there in the crowd expecting something from people. I couldn’t place what at first but then I looked down to something shiny and metallic at his feet. It was a big metal degchi containing boiled eggs that he was planning to sell. But it was raining and nobody was giving him any heed or business, everyone was just running like me. And that point I realized he HAD a right to more angry than me, he couldn’t go anywhere, he had to stand and he was not getting paid, not paid extra like I wanted but to earn at all. Suddenly I remembered that come and go in an A/C bus, sit in an A/C office and earn 5 times than him. I had no reason to be angry.
But it is a different thing I wanted to talk about. So as I said these days I go to a place called Whitefield, that is a office hub, all you see around that place are offices and offices, it’s a steel and glass city with roads running through like arteries and you catch glimpses of people wearing ID badges moving around once in a while. There is nothing else there, all offices and a few malls dotted in some odd localities. And buses and office cabs shunting around; more at office hours, sparse at other timings and it’s a ghost town on weekends.
It’s all clean and sparkling buildings with huge signboards hanging from buildings heralding some of the biggest corporate names. But one day I stumbled into one by-lane, it was lined up with food stalls. Most were selling tea and cigarettes, which is the biggest demand of office goers. They are restricted to smoke inside office and everyone without exception hates the vending machine tea. So apart from the proverbial chaai sutta stalls there were lots of kiosks selling food I was surprised so many street vendors selling idli & dosa in the mornings and rice & Puri Sabzi in the afternoons. I wondered who would eat here, all the offices had their own food courts with certified and closely scrutinized vendors and there was no dearth of restaurants in the nearby malls. But I got my answer when I went there to eat with my colleague. A few were laggards like me who had missed the breakfast time in office and were forced to eat outside. But most were men wearing either white shirt & white pants, or a Khaki one, a sort of uniform. These were the cab drivers. It’s only natural when tens of thousands of people commute to Whitefield everyday from far off locations; most of them avail the office cabs. So while these tens of thousands eat in their neat office food courts inside sparkling glass buildings what of the drivers of the cabs who are not allowed inside the office, but are required wait outside anyways? They would require food as well. This is where these roadside vendors came in. They are fulfilling the auxiliary demand of food created by these offices. It is almost a parallel economy. The employees get their money from the clients whom they service, rather the office gets that, the office pays the cab company which pays these drivers, these drivers pay the food vendors for the food, which in turn pay some other people.
So who are these other people? Not counting the cops of course, who would come once in a while threatening to demolish these illegal unlicensed structures. Thus supplementing their meager salaries with bribes and egos killed by saluting politicians. It is another economy as well, but let’s not get into that for now. So it happens that these vendors have containers filled with water and a tumbler to act as make shift wash basin, my colleague seeing that asked me if it was drinkable water, I said no it is tap water while looking for a tap nearby to point at. But there was no tap nearby, there was no tap anywhere at all. And why should there be one? It is a commercial zone and this a foot path which they have encroached, there wasn’t any tap built. So I was wondering where they got their water from, it is too cumbersome to carry all this water from their homes. I got my answer after a few days when I was eating there again. An old man came up to me and asked me in Kannada if the bike parked near the pavement was mine, I said no so he went to the next person asking the same. I wondered why he was asking that, the bike wasn’t bothering anyone, but I realized why when the bike was removed, a water tanker came in parked there and all this vendors made a line to fill their water containers. The tanker guy gave approx 15 buckets of water, took his money and went to the next bylane to repeat the same thing. The tanker guy has made his business to supply water to these illegal water-connection-less food vendors.
So when you call someone under-privileged next time, when you believe someone who says he didn’t get a chance till now, when you nod along to something like a Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or you roll down to your car window to give someone alms. Think of these people, think of the people who have made their space where no space existed, who have tapped the real market need without even knowing how Marketing is spelled or spoken for that matter. Who are only visible when you scratch the surface, who have no corporate ID badges and message boards to rant upon, no mails to point fingers at that they are whatever they are because of him and her. Believe in the Levis ad, which says – “There are ways out, you just have to look around for them”. Go Forth !
