While the world rushes past, they build their tomorrow one cup of tea, one customer, one moment at a time.
“I’m here at 5 am to set up, and I leave at midnight.”
That is what the coconut vendor in front of Forum Mall told me. Five in the morning to midnight. He said it so simply, like it was just a fact of life. For him, it is.
I have not stopped thinking about it since.
The First Ones Awake
We see so many people on the street every day. On our way to work, while running an important errand, or simply on a morning walk. But we never take a minute to stop and think about the dedication behind the tea we drink after that walk. Or the person setting up a stall for a long day of selling coconuts, or flowers, or vegetables.
These people are awake before anyone else in the city. They collect everything they need for the day and have their stalls open and presentable by the time we get up and get on with ours. And they are usually the last ones to sleep, wrapping up and going home long after the rest of us are already in bed.
For the man at Forum Mall, the day starts much further away than his stall. He is originally from Amalapuram.
Now here is the part that made me smile. Amalapuram is the largest town in Konaseema, the Godavari delta region known for its coconut trees and paddy fields. Konaseema coconuts are sent to places all over India.
So the man selling coconuts in Hyderabad comes from coconut country. He did not just pick up a trade. He brought one with him.
Nineteen Hours
Five in the morning to midnight is nineteen hours.
Read that again. Nineteen hours.
In my last article, I wrote about the calls for 70 hour weeks, and how half of Indian workers already put in 49 hours or more. At nineteen hours a day, he crosses 70 in four days.
Keep in mind, I don’t know how many days a week he does this, and I didn’t ask. But I don’t think it matters much. This is not a way of doing business for him. It is how his family survives.
A Smile Before the Next Customer
And even through all of this, they greet every customer with a big smile and a kind word. They make sure we are taken care of before they move on to the next person.
Every small gesture we give back matters. A good word. A thank you. A little extra left as a tip. It helps them keep going, and it gives them a reason to put in a little more effort the next day.
A few months back, in The Habit of Appreciation, I wrote about what a few kind messages did for me. They put a book back in my hands. If a few lines from friends could do that, imagine what one kind word does for someone at the end of a nineteen hour day.
The People Nobody Counts
So I went looking. How many people like him are out there?
Honestly, nobody knows for sure. Estimates of street vendors in India range from six million to ten million. That is a gap of four million people.
Take Bengaluru. The city counts around 30,000 registered street vendors. The actual number is believed to be more than two lakh.
So it is not just us who walk past them. Sometimes, even the city does not see them.
There has been some change, though. The Street Vendors Act came into force on 1 May 2014, to protect the livelihood of street vendors and regulate street vending. And since 2020, under a scheme called PM SVANidhi, more than 75.5 lakh vendors have taken over 1.12 crore collateral free loans worth more than ₹17,800 crore.
And here is the part I liked the most. Around 30 percent of them went on to get loans beyond the scheme. For many of them, it was the first time a bank had trusted them. Once they were given a chance, they showed they could be trusted.
The Quiet Builders
So, coming back to the man at Forum Mall.
Tomorrow at 5 am, he will be setting up again. Before most of us have opened our eyes. By the time we get there, the coconuts will be ready, and so will his smile.
So the next time you buy something from a street vendor, say a kind word. Notice the hard work behind it. Because these people are the quiet builders of our city’s rhythm. We just never stopped long enough to notice.
The Echo
They open before we wake, and they close after we sleep.
Do you know the name of the person who makes your morning tea?
Echos Of My Mind
A journey through thoughts and imagination
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