"Lo dekho yeh agai bahaar
Hamare chale aana
Yeh jeera pani wala!"
How can you resist someone singing, "hamare chale aana..." even if he is half blind and toothless? And the muddy brown jeera pani was tart with lemon juice and chilled to perfection. My father often wondered how it would taste with a splash of scotch.
Luckily for the Dilliwala, the vendors are still with us. My Sundays would be so dull without the kabariwala’s serenade and the"Karpayat!" of the Kashmiri on a bicycle cart, perched precariously on rolls of carpets. And there is the thin gent on a bicycle with mysterious bits of metal hanging all around his handlebars. It took me a while to decipher his call, he repairs,"peshun cookkaar... sto...o...ve!"
Some vendors have vanished like the man who put lead lining inside brass pots and called out,"Kalaaai karwa lo!", the chaatwalla and his "paani ke batashay" and the pavement entrepreneur announcing,"banian garmiyon ki shaan!" I miss the Jat villagers, with faces like carved statues, who came carrying giant bow-like contraptions on their shoulders, twanging the metal string like itinerant minstrels. They were the dhunaiwalas who fluffed up old cotton wool that was stuffed into quilts. As the courtyard echoed to their twanging, bits of cotton would float about like snow and it said, "Winter is here."
I discovered a unique vendor one afternoon while hanging around the Indian Oil Bhavan on Janpath. The cacophony around the stalls selling clothes was unbelievable. One man jumped up and down yelling,"Tee-shirt le lo pachas rupaye!" The next one had a chorus of two boys thumping away,"Sub kuch le lo ... pachas rupaye!"
In the middle, in an island of utter calm, stood a Sardarji solemnly holding up a placard that declared, "Rs. 50/- ONLY". He stood there, grim, unblinking, expressionless and completely silent. And people would stop, stare, smile and walk up to his stall. Maybe in this maddeningly noisy city, the best way to drum up business is not to drum at all.
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This article originally appearedin Delhi City Limits, December 2007
