I am 22-years old and this is my first job. Everyday, I light the stove by 3 p.m. and serve chaat items to customers till 10 in the night. I was hired to run a small chaat stall attached to a fast food joint here. The stall is small and the business isn’t great. Sometimes I sell for about Rs.1,000 and on other days I hardly do business for Rs.300. However, the stall owner pays me Rs.400 as a daily wage.
Customers here have a different taste and most people don’t really enjoy chaat. I try and give the local taste by using ingredients like curry leaves and saunf, yet the response is lukewarm. I am an 8th-grade school drop-out but I had interest in cooking even at a young age. I make all kinds of chaat such as panipuri, bhel and dahi puri, ragda patties, aloo chaat, vadapav and pav bhaji. I also know to make Chinese fast-food items such as noodles and fried rice.
My master in Delhi from whom I learnt making chaat, sent 10 people from my batch to various locations for work. My friends work in Ludhiana, Mumbai, Kochi and Mangalore. Two months ago when I came to Madurai, I was excited about the place. But now I am tired of not knowing the language. I don’t think I can pick up Tamil and, therefore, I am planning to go back to Delhi after Diwali. Once the marriage season starts, I will get lot of job offers there.
Here, I stay with 40 other migrants like me in a dormitory near the Temple and most of them run chaat stalls. Right now, my earning is quite sufficient for me. I am unmarried and my expenses are less. I am able to live on Rs.2,000 and send home Rs.10,000 every month. My aged parents are farm labourers in the Madhubhani district of Bihar and I have six siblings. My brothers do odd jobs and I am working to marry off my younger sister.
