2 pm Bombay – Bright and sunny! Hot dusty and noisy!
I clean the house, rustle up a meal and catch up with my emails. Before I know I, it is almost 6 pm , I need to go to the market and get some fresh veggies. Just half an hour I promise myself, pick up some cloth bags and lock the house and step out.
The heat, the noise, the dust and the bustle that is Bombay, envelops me in a familiar warmth. The banana vendor, the other fruit vendor and the vegetable vendor call out to me “Bhabhi – Sitaphal leke jao” (Do take the Custard apples), “Bhabhi – aaj palak achcha hai –“ (The Spinach is fresh)
(Bhabhi is the term for elder sister-in-law and is a respectful way to call out)
I signal to them that I’ll pick up the stuff on my way back and continue walking ahead.
Suddenly I spot the Wooden Stool seller – or rather I spot the inverted bunch of stools moving at a very brisk pace in the opposite direction. He is walking beyond the line of cabs parked next to the pavement and the fencing prevents me from reaching out to him. I retrace my steps trying to keep him in sight and finally break into a run to find a gap in the fencing where I can step out and intercept him.
He seems startled – he was probably done for the day and was walking back to his home. I told him I wanted to buy a couple of stools. He told me the price rather warily and did not seem keen on lowering the pile down. I asked him whether he would walk upto my home to deliver the stools as there was no way that I could carry 2 of them all the way back and up the stairs.
When he realized that I was serious about buying them, he lowered the whole pile down – what an amazing way he had stacked them all up! I selected 2 of them and agreed to the price that he asked for. He stacked them back together, lifted the whole pile with ease and I led the way home. In the foyer of the building he lowered his stack of stools again and picking the 2 that I had selected walked up the stairs and dropped them off. I paid him and he went off.
Why am I writing about this? What moved me to write this?
The fact that in today’s age of Amazon home deliveries, Pepper Fry furniture and Ikea furniture, this type of Stool -seller is a vanishing tribe. As far back as I can remember I always have had these wooden stools at home. All my school and college days, it was my simple wooden stool at my study table that saw me thru my study days! When we moved to the farm, we had brought one of the extra-tall wooden stools here and I missed having it in Bombay. It was the perfect height for getting things down from the attic, cleaning the ceiling fan and of course just sitting by the window as well.
I was seeing a stool seller after ages and had to get a tall stool again! And a low one to keep the laptop on when you felt like sitting on the floor and working.
Hand-crafting the stools, hauling them onto their head and then walking around the city the whole day long hoping to sell their wares!
That’s how they make a living!
Presenting here a Painting by an artist friend Amit Romani
(Title: Migrant Labour I Medium: Watercolor on acid free paper In private collection )
Do check out more of his paintings on his website https://www.amitromani.com/
