R slowly drove his green Bajaj Chetak through the narrow streets of Mahabubnagar. The market place was heavily crowded, parking his chektak by the corner of the street, he proceeded to do the day’s purchase. At the entrance were about six women with leafy vegetables before them; one of them, a particularly voluptuous woman, whirling a rotten tomato into the drain behind her, pulled R by his basket, gesticulating him to buy. Her dishevelled hair with broken ends was drawn into a braid that sat right over her head like an anaconda smothering an invisible hemisphere. pointing to the broad leaves, in a tone of disbelief, she intoned “how can anyone not buy these leaves”. R was half dragged into the purchase already. Pointing to one, “take a look at the roots” she observed with an air of scientific wisdom about her; pointing to another, she said something about the fresh smell. But R was not listening, he didn’t need them. Exchanging a ten rupee note for change with a lean but thick skinned cantankerous lady to her right, the voluptuous lady, raised the cement bag cover and dropped her share before proceeding to lay the elephantine thigh over it.
Inside the market, hawkers sat under the tilt of a roof made of thatch, alternating between a thatched one and a cement one. With vegetables laid bare before them, in heaps and wire mesh baskets, they all listened to the radio or an EC TV suspended from the roof of the richer ones. R was busy buying carrots; a cow dug its head into the waste basket beside him, pricing out a cauliflower; monkeys were dancing in merry atop the roofs; someone was feeding a cow with bowl full of rice while a goat sneaked up from behind her and was presently feeding on her cabbages. Someone was lyrically bawling “two for five fifty, four for six fifty….”; still someone implored “ commencing my selling only now, come to me, fresh from the fecund farms”. Occasionally, men with heavy bags (rested firmly on their arched backs) full of cabbages, onions, potatoes, etc shooed the buyers to make way; some dissuaded their buyers, vehemently, of picking out the best from the spread before them. R wondered of he could pick at the tip of the lady fingers (for if the tip budged, they were rotten, if it broke with clear sound, they were overripe); wondered if he could thumb the apples before purchase (for the base of apples were prone to rottenness).
R was now on his way back. He filled the empty half with tomatoes and green leaves; the idea was to defer purchase of tomatoes to the end and avoid crushing them in the bag. To reach the parking area, one has to go through the lane carpeted with red chilli on the road. Machines to grind on either side of the road exhaled flakes of spices and the air burnt a trespasser’s lungs. It was said that the hawkers in that area lived for so long that a thick film of spices protected their lungs.
Near the parking area, a man with ripe brinjals before him and grafitti of scarlet spittoons behind him was animatedly rebuking two ladies, for they obfuscated view of his brinjals from potential buyers. The ladies, rubbished his authority; one of them, scooping out a pair of brown bags with drops of water dripping from sides, observed “but, leaves sell in no time. we will leave you in peace”. With a whopping cough bothering him, a highly spirited pot bellied man was wrestling with his shop’s shutters. The iron shutter’s cheeks rubbed through a pair of greasy fixtures on either ends before winding around the horizontal beam at the top. Presently, the man coughing, puffing and heaving, tried his might to lodge the shutter at the top, but it won’t budge. A young man in shorts from the neighbouring shop came to rescue; with one thrust, he thwacked it so hard that the shutter closed in on itself like an obedient school boy.
On the way home, R indulged his thoughts to sway over the town that he was going to leave for a better one. Hyderabad promised greater prospects for his children. Mahabubnagar in comparison was small, compact, spread out unevenly on either side of the main road that ran through the heart of it. The main road connected the bus stand, Government institutions such as the high school, telephone and the electricity board, and ran for a little over ten kilometres from end to end. Little diversion from the main roads led to railway station and the famous 500 year old banyan tree (only tourist attraction of the town). The people of the town went about their daily routine, cut off from the world outside. Apart form an occasion or two, political gatherings, in an year, they never inconvenienced themselves. Men in road side cafes discussed topics ranging from jurala (dam built on river Krishna) water supply to the draught rankings (the district topped draught hit list of the state frequently). Near clock tower, four theatres engaged families on festival occasions with the giant clock overlooking the proceedings of festivals.
There were rarely any road accidents; average age of two wheeler owners was about forty. Nothing dramatic ever happened in the town, save a case of suicide by a tenth standard student or a cotton producing farmer of the adjoining villages. Auto rickshaws went about leisurely, bus drivers rarely honked, and the roads rarely saw a gridlock.
On bakrid, R’s family received bowls full of semia from the neighbourhood. His wife reciprocated with a festival dish on hindu festivals. People revelled in harmonious stupor, although connected by NH7 to Hyderabad, Mahabubnagar isolated in principle from the issues that did not concern her.
The town hall was home to a magic show or a mimicry show, conducted once in an year; a science exhibition, twice in an year; or a circus, once in two years. Then there was the exhibition (‘uroos’ in local language) conducted once in an year. Here, Peripatetic hawkers and vendors sat themselves by the mosque (dhargha) and sold eye shades for two rupees each, in twelve or more colours; snake charmers melodiously swayed their heads before a benign snake that rose its head reluctantly from the straw basket; hydrogen balloons were a thing of beauty and attracted many; rabbits were for sale, only in pairs. R, a man of frugal principles, stayed away from the vendors. But his wife, a calculated ambitious woman, bought his son golden crusted wooden knifes and pistols with rubber bullets. She planned big for her son, was determined to achieve her targets. Her prudent forecasts for her son’s future left her intolerant to complacency.
Once in five years, a helicopter landed in the town’s ‘high school ground’ for political endeavours. Parties plied lorries full of people from the nearby villages. Each man or woman attending the gathering was unofficially proffered with a local made liquor bottle at the end of the day.
Except for the roar of auto rickshaws every morning and evening at the schools, there was never really any hustle-bustle. There was no cable TV in Mahabubnagar. Recently, four channels (three telugu movie and a national music channel) were deployed amidst fanfare. Before that, there was just doordarshan. Friday and Saturday nights, families glued to television, sat miserably, watching lux and nirma advertisements frequently interceded with brief glimpses of old seventies’ hindi movies. Kids discussed these movies at school on Saturdays, donned in white uniforms. House wives spent the afternoons together with the neighbours. Men drove home leisurely; there was no thought of traffic on their minds
On the other hand, Hyderabad….
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