Like every other saturday, Santa goes shopping this saturday also. This time i notice a placard placed in front of every stall saying (in marathi) 'birthday gift to saaheb, no more plastic bags to be used'. Even though most of the stall owners are from UP, they all follow every thing ordered by the local Shiv Sena branch. Offcourse they followed this one also, no plastic bags. Thankfully we always carry our own bag while vegetable shopping so it didn't affect us.
I ask the guy from whom we buy vegetables daily, "kitna hafta dete ho is jagah ka shiv sena waalo ko? (How much tax you pay the shiva sena guys weekly for allowing you to place your stall in this place illegaly). He says zero. The local shiva sena/mns does not take hafta. He has to pay 'hafta' only to the BMC guys and the local cops. I was impressed, seriously. How much I ask (hafta)... 800/1000 rs per wk, which makes it around 3500 per month... 'not bad at all man, you will have to pay around 15000 as rent if you have to have a legal/proper shop of this size' i say. He says yes but they are still paying around 8-10K per month. 'How?'. He Says this month was a walking rally of around 2000 devotees to shirdi so all the vendors had to pay "chanda (donation)" which was collected by Shiv Sena. Like wise there would be Diwali, Holi, Ganesh chaturthi, durga pooja, etc etc etc and therefore their rent (?) remains the same every month. Wonderful I say. And I was thinking so nice of SS/MNS that they dont take 'hafta', spread the word of 'no plastics', organize huge ganapati stalls, shirdi walkathons and so much for the community. I thought my perception of these guys was really biased coz of the books i read or the people i met. These vendors, though, are still happy... "who pays rent when you get the same space for almost 1/3rd the cost if you are smart enough?"
A few minutes later when our shopping is done and we are about to pay the potato wala, the guy just runs away. We are standing in front of his stall and no one is there. We've already bought our potatoes and when we want to pay this guy runs away. for a moment the wicked santa overtook the nice one and I was so happy that I wont have to pay and i thot of running away with a bagfull of potatoes. When I looked around, all the vendors were gone with their stalls full of vegetables, fruits etc. I was so happy, it was like dream come true, entire market in front of me and no one to ask for money. I can pick up anything and just go to home. Actually. Then comes a Police Van with around 15-20 cops running around and catching any one they can, which mostly consisted of fruit/vegetable vendors who were old/female/handicapped and could not run away. Health is Wealth you see, All the fitter ones ran away and avoided Rs. 1250 fine which the ones who got caught had to pay.
I stand around to watch the drama. I can see a couple of people doing what wicked santa was trying to convince me to do; picking up grapes, oranges, capsicum and filling their bags and moving away. Another 10-15 minutes and all the vendors start coming back one by one (offcourse the police van is gone with those unlucky ones). Within 120 seconds, the business is normal as it was before the van came. People are buying vegetables and vendors are selling as if nothing had happened. I ask the same guy "Gopal, what is this happening? you said BMC/Police take hafta's and you dont have to worry" He says " arre sahab, paise kamane hain to mehnat to karni hi padegi na, ye hota rehta hai har 10-15 din me, ho pakda gaya uska 1250 Rs. loss jo bach gaya wo shana" He says this is an exercise he does almost every alternate weekend. The cops come and take their fitness test, the fitter ones save 1250 rs. that ways establishing the fact that health is fact. The cops will come again in next 10-15 days and some other guys will be caught, some will manage to run and hide and things will go on like this forever.
Well, a good outing. We come back to our cozy and safe housing society guarded 24 hrs by scores of security guards. The first thing I notice is that the glass that is normally there above the lift door handle (so we can see when the lift has come to our floor) is missing. I thought some repair work. When I am going for a small picnic with society friends, one of them tells me about this new business model. Go to all the societies and just remove the lift door glasses and you can make good 10-15K every month (with so many housing societies in small areas, you wont have to go many places). Business innovation...
Then while we are on our drive to Manori, a wkend get away we see a BMW overtaking us swiftly. The friend driving our santro tells us about another business model. He tells us to observe the rear of that BMW and tell us what is missing. We find the car logo. On our way, we could see that in as much as 50% of the big cars (BMW, Merc, Corolla, City etc) the car logo's (normally of steel) are missing. Then the other car of our own group over takes us, and we can't stop laughing "See, Manish ki car ka bhi logo gayab hai". Manish owns a Honda City and has paid 2500 twice to get the car logo pasted and now he manages with Ben10 stickers instead of the 'H' logo of the honda city. He say's although he doesn't like it but it works for him. His dealer only told him while replacing his logo the third time "Manish sahab, ho sakta hai ye logo aapki hi car ka ho". He means to say that there is high probability that the logo he is putting up on his car is the same one stolen a few days back". There is a gang of guys who employ school/college students and remove all the car logo's from the big cars in day time and sell it to the dealers at around 500/700 Rs. each. They say the logo's of merc/bmw etc can fetch them as much as 5-7K (which the dealer will sell to the customer at 12-13K.
I now know the real meaning of this song... "zara bachke, zara hatke.. ye hai mumbai meri jaan"
2 comments:
hahahha nice one sante....on this logo..someone did a story in ET, the theft is so rampant that no need to get it replaced..still bombay is the safest place of india..kya hoga hamara :)
the logo wala biz idea is awesome !!
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