A citizen’s new enterprise.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

It demands guts plus optimism–as well as some fortitude to withstand setbacks–for an otherwise homebound person to come up with such a simple but daring enterprise. Which is: to cook a dish at home, and then walk out of the house into the big wide world with the dish, set it on a table by the footpath, and wait for strangers to shell out their hard-earned cash for that dish.

This is what Shweta is doing this weekend afternoon. She is selling the homely rajma chawal that she had cooked at her home in Pratap Nagar. The young woman has set up the stall beside the entry to the crowded Sunday Book Bazar at Mahila Haat on Asaf Ali Road. Not a seasoned businesswoman, this is Shweta’s second time as an entrepreneur on this location. “I first came here last Sunday.” For now, Shweta plans to operate her lunch stall only on Sundays.

The establishment is unassuming. Two metal containers and a large plastic jar placed atop a folding table are filled with rajma, chawal and raita respectively. Shweta herself is standing behind the table, under a lush hedge of pink bougainvilleas.

“I woke up at 4 in the morning, but my preparations had already started the night before when I left the rajma beans to soak in a pan of water… in the morning, I cooked the rice, and got busy with rajma preparations… putting the pressure cooker ceeti (whistle), frying the masalas, peeling onion-tomato-garlic…”

Two folks walk out of the Book Bazar and asks Shewta (in vain) for directions to the nearest bus stop, unaware that she herself is new to the area.

Shweta says her husband, Akash, who trades in mobile screen guards, is supportive of her efforts. Then there is Sudha, her mother. “Mummy is my right arm, she gave me confidence to get out of home and work.”

Shweta had actually launched her rajma-chawal enterprise some months back in another locality. “Woh chala nahin, It failed.” She later came to know about the potential of re-launching the business outside the Book Bazar. Indeed, a full-fledged food street has lately come up outside the market gate catering to the book-buying public. This afternoon, scores of carts are selling khasta-subzi, chhole-bhathura, musambi juice… a sugarcane juice stall is facing Shweta’s stall.

If the business stabilises, the entrepreneur says, she plans to name the rajma-chawal stall after her sister—Shalu.