His keen eyes were darting from one stall to the other.
“15 ke half kilo”
(15 for half kilo)
“10 ka ek pau” (10
for a quarter kilo)
Midst all the hue and cry, were hundreds of people buying
food for their families. Haggling prices and selecting the best possible
product. Some went directly to patronized stalls and got their weekly dose of
vegetables and fruits. Some, more adventurous, ventured around in the hope of
striking a better deal somewhere and maximizing whatever they got for their
money. More often than not, these ended up not only spending more of their
time, effort and patience but also ended up getting less of their money’s
worth.
He had patronized stalls, but he was clever. He had fixed
different shops for different purposes. He was aware that bending too much
towards one particular person or stall would make him over dependent and
vulnerable to manipulation by that stall owner. These were some of the lessons
of life he applied in something as seemingly insignificant as shopping for
vegetables.
As he went around he thought about the entire structure of
the society that he lived in. The fact that all the vegetables were produced at
one place and then brought by transport to mandis,
where they were sold at a wholesale price in bulk to smaller vendors, who would
then bring these vegetables from door to door for the consumers to buy. The
farmer who put in his hard work to produce the vegetables and fruits got paid
for their hard work, the people who brought them from the farmer and made it
available to a much larger consumer base got paid for the effort they put in
arranging for the transportation, the person driving the trucks got paid for
ensuring a safe and timely delivery of the product to the market, the local
vendors got paid for the effort they put in getting the products from the mandis at a wholesale rate, the end
consumers got paid in terms of the energy they gathered from eating this food
which in term helped them to go about their routine activities.
Contrast this to something as simple as everyone having a
farm in their backyard, growing their own fruits and vegetables, tending to
them and then using them to feed themselves.
But then that would mean so many people getting unemployed
….and so his thoughts trailed and faded.
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