Today as I visited the morning market, the first time my heart sank. I had been pedaling to the market nearest to my home, light-heartedly, every day; looking for the dark, robust-build man in his mid-thirties, like others; the one who sold fresh vegetables from the nearby villages. For three consecutive days the vegetable vendor had been absent; leaving all his customers in the lurch. On enquiring I learnt that he had gone to attend a friend’s wedding ceremony, one he certainly could not have avoided, even at the cost of losing on his business for an appreciable time.
Were there no other vendors in the market? There were. But the young man had made a niche for himself in the people’s minds, so that he was flocked around everyday, leaving the other vendors warding away flies. The man did not even have a helper, and single-handedly did his business; often keeping his customers waiting. Not that the other vendors sold rotten vegetables; they too loaded their stock from the same places, but sat with hapless faces other times, when their friend had the single monopoly over the market. It had become a habit for the babus to buy from him and no one else even if it meant going back home with empty sacks.
It was a matter of prestige to be denied wares on the grounds of replenishment. As I stood haplessly, waiting for my turn, watching other customers exert themselves and lay their hands upon the best of the potol (green potato) for a rupee less than the market price or priding themselves for coming late and getting served first, amidst meek cries of ‘Eki, eki, jara age esheche tader age chere dao,’; I remembered the idiom ‘Old habits seldom die soon’.
Suddenly a man of fifty-five to sixty years of age pushed his way through the crowd and demanded angrily. ‘It’s been long I told you to keep my stuff ready…I’m getting older and can’t keep my patience you know' And then as if clarifying us 'I scold and sometimes even thrash people ..’ To my utter dismay, I found nobody protesting, rather everybody trying to coax the vendor into serving them in meek tones. After the old man had left with his bag of vegetables, I asked one of the men scared shitless. 'Was he a policeman or a party cadre?' He stared at me blankly for sometime and then looked at the others, perhaps for support, before mumbling 'We also thought him belonging to anyone of them..'
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