http://blogs.fullhyderabad.com/showblog.php?blogId=495 My amazing experience of buying vegetables from a remarkable vendor at ameerpet   Some call him Mia. Some call him Babu. Some address him as Arey Bhai. Nobody seems to know his real name. He is a small time vegetable vendor with a push cart, selling his wares some 100 yards from my ameerpet apartment. I would have missed the opportunity of meeting him, had my wife been little less sickly than what she was this morning, had the rythu bazaar van not missed its weekly visit to our nukkad yesterday, or had I been a trifle more lethargic than what I was an hour ago. It was a situation of you-get- vegetables or you-get-no-lunch.   To compensate for my ignorance about such an uncommon hawker in my neighborhood (somebody mentioned him to me earlier), I gather as much info as I can while I pick my vegetables. Actually, you cannot pick any vegetables from his baskets. You do not need to. Mia has already done the job for you. All the vegetables in his gunnysacks and open heaps are seasonal, full bodied, fresh and inviting. There are about eight buyers, each collecting not less than five kilos on the average. I guess I have to wait a good quarter hour before my turn would come and start watching the scene wondering what I should do. Seeing my inaction, Mia helpingly offers me a bamboo basket. I take the cue and the basket. Apart from the usual bottle gourd, cabbage, carrot, okra, raw plantain, I collect some ridge gourd too. I normally avoid eating ridge gourd, but today the vegetable on my ignore-list somehow appears tantalizing, and I collect four of them. Surprisingly, Mia clears the packing, weighing, and settling the account of all the eight senior customers in the four minutes I take for filling my basket. And a fresh batch of     six or seven customers take their positions, couple of them arriving in cars.   Something strikes you on your first glance at Mia. Despite his disheveled dress, unkempt hair, a hint of BO around him and my baseless prejudice that Muslim hawkers of Hyderabad fleece the unwary customers, I notice his eyes carry a twinkle you cannot place. You almost befriend him for no reason. His countenance has an underlying smile a photograph can never capture.   I approach him with my two baskets, in anticipation of the usual weighing routine. As he takes a look at my baskets, I ask him to add some spinach, some potatoes, coriander, curry leaves and green chillies. He complies with my request in ten seconds flat without bothering to ask me what quantities I need, as if he has an inborn propensity to assess the people’s needs—he actually has, as the contents of the bag he handed over to me prove. My only tête-à-tête with him is why I do not find tomatoes and his answer that ‘aaj tamatar achche nahin hain’     Then the great truth dawns on me. He does not have a weighing balance! It seems he does not need one and does not believe in one!   He asks me to pay forty rupees. It appears he sums up the amount payable to the nearest ten rupees—to the customer’s advantage!   I pay; somewhat guilty faintly aware that the neighborhood Ambani Fresh would make my purse lighter at least by sixty rupees for my purchase.         People tell me that Mia runs his ‘business’ for about three hours daily in the morning at the same spot and he has been doing that for the past twenty years!   I come back home with mixed feelings, most positive of all being the world is still a good place to live.     http://blogs.fullhyderabad.com/showblog.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=3029&blogId=495 Thu, 15 May 2008 13:21:16 +0000 If you can read this post, it means that the registration process was successful and that you can start blogging http://blogs.fullhyderabad.com/showblog.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=3028&blogId=495 Thu, 15 May 2008 13:21:01 +0000