Table talk with two

Glimpsing into the life of migrant-citizens

In a megapolis of millions, it is a table for two. But it is a figurative table, not existing for real. The two young men are sharing a serving of steamy hot streetside sooji halwa. The plate is a piece of paper, and the palm of one of them is their makeshift table. Two huge clusters of red balloons are bobbing behind the young men, trembling in the cold smoggy air of a severely polluted December evening. Each cluster is tied to the back-carrier of a bicycle. Ram and Mukesh are hawkers of balloons. Together they talk of their life in the city.

We also sell brooms… see, they are clipped on our cycle’s back-carrier.

We are from Rajasthan, in Udaipur. Each year we arrive in Dilli-gurgawa around Diwali and stay until the new year, selling balloons and brooms.

We ourselves make these brooms but we get the balloons from the wholesalers here. But we have to fill up the hawa in the balloons…. hard work.

We are cousins. He is my bua ka beta. Many of us cousins and uncles are in the city right now, here we all live in a jhuggi, it is under a flyover.

The jhuggi is ten kilometres from this bazar. We come daily to this bazar on our cycle. Takes an hour.

Our village is so far from Dilli…

We have to travel so far every year because there are too many people in the family… we are actually farmers, but our khet are tiny, never enough harvest for a living.

Brooms give more money than balloons. We make brooms out of khajoor ki ghaas.

We make new brooms every morning in our jhuggi… that’s why we are able to leave for the bazar only by three in the afternoon… we return to the jhuggi 10-12 hours later, then we cook our dinner.

We have to bring with us a great quantity of khajoor ki ghaas from our village… impossible to carry it all in a train or in a roadways bus…

Many of us together book a bari gaadi, like a mini-truck…. Only then we are able to bring to Dilli our bicycles, our khajoor ki ghaas, and other things.

We are soon returning to the village.

Yes, when the year will end.

The men make the payment to the halwa seller, and drag their cycle into the bazar crowd, the balloons bobbing behind them.

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