The guests from outside
By: K S S Pillai
It is Diwali time. Those employed have salaries paid, and some have their bonus. A few employers have also paid festival advance, which would be recovered in installments. Even the poor people celebrate the festival by borrowing or selling what they have. Overall, the entire country is in a festive mood, and the shops are buzzing with customers.
One inevitable item a household can’t do without is a new dress for each family member. If there is a maidservant, you are expected to buy a new dress for her. Apart from regular shops, there appear roadside traders selling all kinds of things, from clay ‘diyas’ to dresses, food items, and other things. Despite the high price, even shops selling jewellery made of gold and other precious metals are crowded.
Traders of all big cities complain of hawkers from outside the state monopolizing the market during festivals. It is alleged that they grease the palms of the authorities for turning Nelson’s Eye to their activities. As they do not pay regular taxes, and the other expenses they incur are minimal, they sell things at a cheaper rate. Then there are large malls owned by well-known industrialists that offer several gift schemes.
With the constant movement of people from one corner of the country to another and doing business, as guaranteed by our constitution, it is legally difficult to stop them. They also get support from political parties on the lookout for vote banks.
As my housing society does not have round-the-clock security guards, hawkers selling all kinds of things swarm it right from early morning. Even most of the beggars are outsiders. The God-fearing people offer them money, and the recipients, who spend very little, save much money. Some even own shops in their native place, established with the money they collected over the years from other states.
Those unaccompanied by women hire rooms that house several workers from the same state. They have community kitchens, bringing down the expenditure and allowing them to send most of the money earned home.
Our raddiwalas are regulars from other states. They buy anything from old newspapers and furniture, though their scales are loaded against you. They sell ‘pure’ ghee and honey at a much cheaper rate than the market, and many people are happy they got these items at a low price. Dry fruits like cashews, badam, pistachios, dry grapes, walnuts, apricots, and dates are sold by them, though their purity is in doubt.
Over time, they have developed their peculiar ways of announcing their presence. Some call out so shrilly before you are hardly out of bed that you don’t want them near your home. Some innovative hawkers have recorded their advertisements and go on playing the record at a high volume.
In my native state of Kerala, workers from other states are called ‘guest workers’. Thanks to the militant trade unionism, even unskilled workers are paid high wages there. Traditional workers like those who used to climb coconut trees have abandoned their trade, preferring to do other kinds of work in the Gulf countries. In the past, the wages for tree climbers were a percentage of coconuts harvested.
That has become a part of the past, as the new tree climbers from outside the state charge a certain amount for climbing a tree, irrespective of the nuts harvested. Households with fewer trees have stopped hiring people to climb the trees, allowing the nuts to fall when they get dry.
It has become common to see these guest workers working as cooks in restaurants in cities and other eateries along the highway that offer ‘traditional home-made Kerala food’.
The problem had become acute during the COVID-19 pandemic when workers from other states wanted to return to their native places. Even after the disease subsided, it was a Herculean task to coax them back to restart the closed factories.
(The author is a retired professor of English. A regular contributor to ‘Kashmir Vision’, his articles and short stories have appeared in several national and international publications)
