A Vegetable Shop and the Mumbai Marathon

A man, a neighbour has started a vegetable shop outside the building where I live. He has arranged the vegetable neatly and is standing beside it waiting for customers. I guess, as a person who had a business once (at least tried to), this is the harshest and most frustrating sort of wait, a businessman waiting for the first customer, and more. Starting a business needs guts and the ability to be quick on the feet and doing things. Not all have this ability, this taking of the callousness of customers, their fear whether they are being cheated by a novice, a new comer, who probably knows nothing about running a business.

But my heart goes out for him. Seeing his impatient wait, I ask wifey if she needs anything, some vegetable: aubergine, ladyfinger, drumsticks, tomatoes, anything that I could buy from him, but she, the common-sense-hardened housewife that she is says, “Why does he want to start a shop at his doorstep, maybe he is expensive, maybe he is selling discarded vegetable from the wholesale market.”

Women and their logic! Hats off!

They are running for a cause, I mean citizens (which includes celebrities, socialities, film stars, and stray other wannabes) and the whole of Azad Maidan has been cordoned off into "Media Centres", "Broadcast Vehicles", toilets, barricades, observation posts, and police bundobasts. I wonder who is paying the bills for all this. Couldn't it have gone into building toilets or in keeping whatever toilets there are clean and in usable condition? Have you ever gone into a public toilet without feeling puky and holding your nose and choking yourself in the process?

But who listens to writers anymore. Hmm, grumble, grumble! "Hey don't you worry, men," says Anthonybhai, "I am wearing my chamko sneakers, shorts and tee-shirts and going to ogle at the girls, men, what girls, men, lovely ones in those leotards. They so much like model-bidel, men (wink)".