Every day, Shiva leaves home for Ukkadam market at 7 a.m. to purchase the day’s stock of fruits that will help people beat the summer heat. With the onset of summer, he churns out mousambi and musk melon juice at a frenetic pace from 8 a.m. till late evening at his stall near Nehru Stadium. While this has been his business for the last 10 years, the number of customers, his working hours and his earnings rise along with the mercury level every summer. Juice vendors like him find summer more fruitful than the rest of the year.
“I have customers whom I have known for more than five years,” says Shiva, popularly known as “juice anna” among his customers.
Busy crushing sugarcane and filling a jar with the extracted juice is Sadiqani. A glass of juice costs ₹ 20. “I'm always excited during weekends as my sales increase with the rise in the number of people visiting the park (VOC Park),” he says. He too earns around ₹ 1,000 a day during summer. “Summer time is when I get most of my sales and I sit here throughout the year. Monsoons are the worst as I cannot open my stall. I do not have any other business and have been doing this for 22 years now, starting from the age of 15.”
The temporary stalls of such vendors dot the streets of the city, using the shades of trees as a cool place to serve refreshing butter milk, fruit juice, tender coconut, sodas, a plate of fruit salads, and a liberal helping of nongu (palm fruits).
Alayan Swami sells sherbet with lemon juice for more than four decades. A glass of of sherbet costs ₹. 15 while it becomes ₹. 20 if one adds soda to it. The sherbet and soda sale is only for four months during summer and he turns to selling coconut milk during the rest of the year. He proudly claims that he married off two of his daughters with the money he earned out of this business.
Summer months (February-May) see a spike in the sale of mangoes, grapes, water melons, and oranges at the fruit market at Ukkadam. The market opens at 4 a.m. and customers keep streaming in till 9 p.m. The bulk purchases, including those by the juice vendors, happen early in the morning, while household purchases are heavy in the evening as people prefer to come after the sun goes down, says Ali Akbar Khan.
