This is Arun Salvi, a vegetable vendor who brings fresh vegetables every day to our door step. He is a born and bred Punewallah and his late father left their village near Ahmed Nagar, about 130 Kms from our home, before Arun was born to become a mason in Pune.
You can see how innovative he has been with the container loaded to the carrier of his bicycle. There is a lid that opens half way and folds back and after he has dispensed the vegetables, he simply folds it back to close it. He also uses hand bags slung on the handle bars to carry the lighter stuff like greens so that they don’t get damaged in the bit container.
Arun lives with his wife and two children quite close to our home and goes to the daily vegetable whole sale market about five Kms from here every morning and starts vending from about 8.00 am. He moonlights at a different occupation in the evenings to augment his income from his pherrying, but I would rather not talk about that career here.
Arun’s wife too works as a housemaid closer to their residence. Their two children go to an English medium school and they have great hopes for their children with the opportunity to get educated thus. The children are what you may be familiar as latch key children except that when they return from school, if the mother is not at home, they will simply park themselves at a neighbour’s place till she returns. Nothing unusual in this as it is accepted that good neighbourliness, in their value system, means extending such assistance to each other at need. They will very gladly extend the same facility to other children of the neighbourhood.
Here is another view of his carrier with the lid closed.
