The Newspaper Vendor.

India is a land of vast diversities – cultural, climatic, religion, geographical – you name it! The following narrative occurred when I had travelled by train from one part of the country to another.  

A new place and a different language and culture, even though it is within our own country, makes one yearn for the familiar amidst the unfamiliar. Unbidden, the audio and visual apertures open up for catching a familiar sound or sight. The same person might have felt, previously, that the vendors are an intrusion and wondered why the Railways could not curb this menace of unsolicited salesmanship.

But unfamiliar surrounding acts as the healing magic potion to make hawkers and vendors become a welcome intrusion, even with a selfish purpose. How devious are the ways with which the human mind processes the visual & audible clues to position itself in familiar territory!

The mind roams around, cataloguing the different types of hawkers and vendors – snacks, papers & periodicals, in the neighbourhood. Then it spends time on gauging the push-cart vendors with fruits, veggies and assortment of other items, plying their trades - down the lanes and by lanes of the locality.

In course of time, these mobile vendors were forced to become stationery and stay parked in a specific spot, on the street corners or at the intersections of a busy road – respecting restrictive trade practices. High rise apartment buildings, Malls in the vicinity, encouraging planned marketing on week ends, have caused the push-cart vendor’s utility value to nose dive. The push-cart vendor has been pushed to a “Just see if he is there, I forgot to get…” status.

The mind had almost finished taking a review of the role of hawkers and vendors in the society - still struggling to come to grips with the foreign sounding vernacular falling on its eardrums. Frequent travelers are not affected by this unfamiliarity–the first timers only suffer this “caterpillar on the skin” feeling.   

Like a hawk swooping on its prey, it directs the person to the nearest newspaper vendor (fixed or mobile) to buy a copy of a newspaper, in a familiar language. To get in to the local atmosphere, a hesitant conversation - with bits and pieces of the local language picked up so far, is attempted. Not to please the vendor but to reassure the self that navigation in unfamiliar surroundings is still possible.

There is a newfound joy in exchanging pleasantries, hesitantly in the local dialect - lacking proficiency, with the newspaper vendor to establish a reasonable acquaintance. As a reward, for making a conscious attempt to breach the language barrier the surprise unfolds the next day. The vendor sports a knowing smile and hands over the reserved, choice of newspaper.

Though the language barrier is still in place but now gestures, partial sentences and phrases are adequate to converse with each other. These attempts, at least have served the limited purpose of informing the vendor that the person’s stay at that place is of a short duration. The vendor understands that it might be for a week or ten days of newspaper meetings.

Happiness in getting to meet each other – not even knowing each other’s name, has taken precedence over the sale of a newspaper, as far as the vendor is concerned. The buyer feels the meeting was more pleasurable than reading the newspaper.

The day of departure drew close, leaving a feeling that a temporary friendship is about to come to an end. The so called conversational exchanges were adequate to convey that much to the vendor .With hours to spare; one more visit to the newspaper vendor gets easily accommodated. The vendor greets with a wide grin and asks, “Why didn’t you come in the morning. When will you come back, again?” He hands over the reserved newspaper with a little sadness in the exchange.

Overcome by emotion, the managed reply could not be anything but like this – “haan, ho saktha hain...jaldi hi latunga!”

On the return journey, the vendors in the train are no more an intrusion than a gust of wind on a sultry day.