Geetanjali Krishna: Victims of bird flu

Shabbir stands gloomily in the sabzi mandi in Noida, waiting for customers. But although the mandi is bustling, nobody comes up to him. "Only Rs 50 a kilo," he cries, but people walk past with averted faces. "To think that till last week, I used to make at least Rs 1,000 a week selling chicken here!" says Shabbir despairingly, "and in the last two days, I haven't sold a single bird!"

So far, the mandi has been a good place to do business for Shabbir, Javed and other chicken sellers here. "We've many regular customers, and people find it convenient to buy their fruit, vegetable and chicken from the same place," says Javed, "in fact, on most days, my clothes get really dirty cutting chicken all day "" but in the last two days, my wife and mother see me returning in clean clothes and know that business has been bad again." Even during the Navratras, when most Hindus avoid eating non-vegetarian food, they haven't seen such poor sales. "This bird flu scare is going to cripple us!" says Shabbir.

How these small-time chicken vendors operate is simple. They purchase their stock from the animal market at Rs 50 a bird, and keep them locked in tiny cramped cages next to their carts. Whenever they have a customer, they butcher the bird over an open drain next to the mandi. None of them can understand how their birds can possibly cause disease. "When a bird is diseased, it becomes lethargic and stops feeding," says Javed, "but our birds here aren't like that at all!" He thrusts a squawking bird under my nose "" "how healthy and plump it is "" does it look diseased to you? I don't understand how people can stop eating chicken just because some birds in Maharashtra have got a rare bug!" Shabbir can't get over the injustice of it all. "It's the people who eat frozen chicken because they are too squeamish to come to us, who are spreading such rumours," says Shabbir, "for what could be more hygienic than freshly slaughtered chicken!"

I point towards the fly-ridden chicken pieces that he has displayed on a tray. "Not all your chicken is freshly slaughtered, is it?" I ask.

"Oh those are the pieces we sell at much lower rates, to people who cannot afford them," replies Shabbir. "Normally, these sell at about Rs 30 to 40 per kilo, though none of us have sold even these pieces in the last few days." Javed says, "I sold some yesterday, but the man had probably not heard the news in the morning!"

Bird flu, I tell them, spreads fastest amongst people like them. "Slaughtering chickens by hand exposes one to greatest risks of contracting bird flu," say I. And if their birds are infected, cutting them in open drains, and throwing their feathers and entrails in for good measure, will exposes everyone around to the dreaded disease. They look at me incredulously. "Are you trying to tell us that we should just retire and let our wives and children starve?" says Shabbir angrily. "And if the disease is as bad as the papers make it out to be, why doesn't the government do something to help us? We have sold chicken all our lives, and if the bird flu actually spreads to Delhi, we won't have a livelihood left!"

I leave them, unsuccessfully exhorting people to buy chicken and bird flu be damned. Looking at their frustrated, helpless faces, I figure that Shabbir and his chicken-seller friends are the first victims of bird flu I've come across.