One afternoon, I had an urge to eat cluster beans (or guar phali as we call them in Hindi). I asked the local vegetable vendors, but they said they didn’t sell such desi vegetables. “They’re not in fashion,” said one snootily, “nobody eats them any more.” One of them suggested I tried the ghora-walla (horseman). “Who’s that?” I asked mystified. It turned out that a couple of vendors travelled everyday from Gurgaon to Delhi on horse-drawn carts, selling vegetables grown in their villages, if not on their own land. The idea of people galloping down the Gurgaon-Delhi expressway with vegetable-laden carts sounded rather ludicrous, but I told the vendors to send them along if they survived the journey.
The very next morning a raucous voice shouted outside my window. “guar phali! Who wants guar phali here?” I dashed out hurriedly and saw a young boy sitting on a mangy, ill-tempered horse while his father was weighing some green tomatoes for a customer. Attached to it was a cart laden with fresh vegetables. I asked him to select a bunch of beans for me as I looked at the array of greens he had. “They’re all fresh,” said the child, rattling off their prices, “much better than the stale ones you get in air-conditioned supermarkets.” In the meantime his father was dealing with customers two houses away. The boy expertly totalled the amount I owed him, and added a large bunch of coriander for good measure. Impressed by the ease with which he conducted his business, I asked, “Which class are you in?” He evaded my question, asking instead if I’d like them to come to me regularly. Of course I did. Over the next few weeks, the horse cart came to me every alternate morning. And so did the boy.
“Don’t you go to school at all?” I asked again another time. The boy fell silent. “I don’t like studying,” he said sullenly, “I’ve enrolled in school in my village near Sohna, but rarely attend.” He deftly weighed my purchases and computed the amount I owed him. I asked him why he didn’t like school. “It seems like a waste of time…” he said, “whenever I go, nothing much happens. Teachers don’t teach and students don’t study.” He quickly changed the topic by offering me some green mangoes. “These are just off the tree. You’re going to love their fragrance…” Overhearing our conversation, his father took me aside. “My boy is a smart alec anyway. If he starts going to school, he’ll become too big for his boots,” he said laughingly. Sobering up, he added, “Children waste their time in village schools. They don’t get the sort of education they deserve. Look at me. I’ve studied up to class ten and am still doing what my illiterate father did… I don’t want my son to do the same.”
While we were chatting, the boy bantered with amused customers as well as with some ladies who tried bargaining with him. “Customers like him,” his father said pensively, “he’s a natural salesman…and what he’s learning with me on this horse cart is going to be much more useful to him than any bookish education.” I asked him what his plans for his son were. “Well, he can stay enrolled in school for the next two or three years. Then he’ll have to decide whether to study seriously or drop out,” he said. Watching him glibly tell a customer that cucumber was the best method of beating the heat – and then selling her the vegetable in question, I couldn’t decide where the boy would learn more – in a classroom or on the back of his mangy horse?