Constantly rising prices make buying fruit in Bangalore a luxury rather than a staple, but vendors in the vicinity of Avenue Road provide sweet refreshments to people who frequent the area at affordable prices every day.
These vendors vie for the freshest fruit at K.R. Market and sell assorted cut fruits on carts and bicycles positioned all around the area. Offering a minimum of three fruits, one of which is most often the refreshing watermelon, each plate is priced at Rs. 20 and contains a good 250 gm of fruit.
Some may stay away from cut fruit on the grounds that it is unhygienic, but Prakash, one of the vendors, says: “I cut only limited batches of fruit according to how many plates I sell, and a plate doesn’t remain unsold for more that 15 minutes. I’ve been in this business for about 10 years now. If my fruits were not healthy, I would have been put out of business long ago.”
Another vendor who sells off a bicycle here, said that besides the constant need to grease the hands of policemen in order to avoid being harassed, procuring fruits sometimes becomes too expensive for the fruit sellers.
