Occupation: Iftar snack vendor
I brought more than 600 uzhunnuvadas and samosas to sell today for nombuthura [breaking the fast]. It’s only 5 p.m. and I’ve already sold more than half the stock, in the half an hour or so since I opened this wayside stall in front of Manacaud Central mosque. By the look of it, everything will be sold out by about 6.45 p.m., round about the time of the evening prayer. If there is some left we usually give it to the poor or to the children in local orphanages.
For the past three years now, during the holy month of Ramadan, I have been operating this stall here, along with my friend and business partner, Anwar. During this time many enterprising part-time vendors like us set up food stalls in front of every mosque in the city and beyond, selling snacks such as bondas, vadas, vazhakappam, mutta surka, dates, and cut fruits, narunandi sarbath and so on. Anwar and I decided on vadas and samosas because they are always the best sellers of the lot. We sometimes sell kinathappam too. Not today, though. Our friend, who usually makes it for us, met with a minor accident and is still recovering.
It’s against our religion to serve stale food for nombuthura , so we take care to sell only fresh snacks, made with the freshest of ingredients. Perhaps that’s why we have a steady stream of customers for our crispy vadas. We also provide a sachet of coconut chutney to go with the vadas, which many roadside vendors don’t give. It’s not only Muslims from the mosque who buy the snacks. Plenty of others who travel along this busy thoroughfare stop by our stall too. In fact, many of them become regulars for the month that the stall is open.
We source the snacks from an acquaintance, who sells to us wholesale at Rs. 4.50 apiece. We, in turn, sell at a slightly higher rate. We first tried making the snacks at home in Chala. However, it was just was not feasible, given the cost of fresh ingredients, oil, gas, labour charge and the likes. Besides, we don’t have much time to make it ourselves. I am a vegetable vendor at Chala market and Anwar here is a butcher and our mornings are usually tied up with our daily work.
Actually, selling Iftar snacks is not very profitable. We do it because this is what our fathers did during Ramadan and what they taught us to do. We think of it as our little service to society – providing good food to break the fast. I’m 32 years old and Anwar is 30. We both have families to support and we believe in working hard to make their lives comfortable.
(A weekly column on the men and women who make Thiruvananthapuram what it is)
