It was 8:30 in the morning. The roads were still calm before the crowds of people who would eventually rush out towards their daily working lives.
Ranbir pedalled his cart on the road, he woke up much earlier in the morning at 5:30 am, helping his wife in some of the household chores before leaving for work.
The cart came to a stop at a spot where it did every day, under the shade of a tree. Ranbir was a vegetable seller; he had been for the past twenty long years.
Some early customers came and bought their needs of the day, and then Ranbir was off on his rounds around the societies. He called out what he was selling as he pedalled slowly, those who wanted to buy would ask him to stop. For some regular customers he would ring the doorbell. Near the apartment buildings he would stop and people would come to buy vegetables.
On this day, the air felt a little different. There were some people who displayed a different kind of interest in Ranbir. It was due to a news article, and the news article was because Ranbir had written a book. A book which contained stories based on the many shades of life he had witnessed while doing his work every day.
There are a huge number of authors nowadays, more than what one can imagine. I went to a bookstore of a particular publisher and the number of books I saw there and I knew many of them will never reach the light for which they were written. It has become a world more complex; the focus is more on how a book is marketed than how it is written. Thus, a vegetable vendor writing a book became a topic of interest to newspapers and as it spread, it became a book of interest to a bigger publisher who republished it.
On monetary terms it might not have been a great help, but it allowed Ranbir to become popular on social media and opened his earning prospects elsewhere with brand collaborations and all those social media perks which the media nowadays uses to mock office going professionals.
Ranbir continues to be a vegetable vendor.
“I love what I do and it has become more interesting than before. So, I will keep doing it and other things alongside with it if possible, maybe I will write another book,” said a smiling Ranbir in a video clip recorded by an influencer.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 