Geetanjali Krishna: Summer jobs in Shimla

We were walking on Shimla's crowded mall one evening when someone hailed us: "please madam," he wheedled, "put the little baby in my pram!" The "baby" in question was my headstrong three-year-old, who thought it was beneath her dignity to be wheeled around when she could run around and have me running behind her.

So I shook my head in the negative. "Please madam," he repeated, "I haven't made any money all day! If the child doesn't want to sit right now, at least you could use the pram to hold your bags!" I asked him why he was saying business was bad, when there were crowds of tourists all around us.

He gestured ruefully to one of the many newly-weds passing by "" "people like them mean no business for us. We need families, people with children who tire easily.

But unfortunately this week, there have been too many honeymooners and not enough parents!"

Giving prams on hire is one of the many ways in which locals in this popular hill town earn some extra money during summer, when tourism peaks.

"But for villagers like me, who come from the hills nearby, what we earn in Shimla in the summer, has to last us the entire year," said the pram-wala.

His name was Nek Ram Sharma, he said, and this was his second season wheeling prams in Shimla. "The rest of the year, my family and I tend land, growing wheat and corn," he said, "but the land grudgingly parts with barely enough foodgrain for us to subsist on "" there's never enough to sell."

When he was younger, his father tilled the land and never felt the need to do any work.

"It's not that the land was any more fertile then, or it rained more. But one didn't need money so much, and could get by with barter. But now, one needs money for children's school fees, for going to doctors," said Sharma.

Since there is little scope for earning money in his little village high up in the mountains, he and many others like him, arrive in Shimla at the beginning of summer to make their fortunes.

They stay in tiny, ghetto-like hutments, saving as much as they can to take back home with them when the tourists leave.

Some sell fruits, others, small toys. Some set up little pavement shops, but run the risk of getting caught by the authorities. Sharma zeroed on the business of prams last season, when a fellow villager made good money on it.

"It can be quite lucrative, provided, of course, that enough of the tourists who throng the mall aren't on their honeymoon," he said. On good days, he said, he could earn as much as Rs 200, charging up to Rs 60 an hour from tourists only too glad to wheel their tired children instead of carrying them. "But on bad days, I could earn nothing!" he said.

Every season, he said, he needed an investment of Rs 200 to Rs 450 to buy a new pram. "I give a lot of though to what colour the pram should be to attract maximum customers," he said, "navy blue is good, as it doesn't look dirty too quickly, but I thought maybe customers would prefer red and pink."

This season, his red pram hasn't proved much of a money spinner yet. He's thinking that maybe a pink pram next season would prove more profitable "" especially if some of this season's honeymooners return next season as baby boomers!