Delhiwale: Arms and the man

Glimpsing into a citizen's life.

There’s a street in Old Delhi called Galli Manihar Walli. A late Walled City scholar once told this reporter that it takes its name from the profession of “manihar wale,” the men in bangle shops specifically employed to help the female shoppers delicately slip the glass bangles across their fists and slide them on to their arms. People of this community lived in this lane, long ago. Their profession was hereditary.

Delhiwale

The middle-aged Santosh lives miles away from the Mughal-era quarter, in the Millennium City of Gurugram, but describes himself as a manihar. He has drifted away from the profession of his forefathers. Not very far though. He still sells accessories that are worn around the arms, just like the bangles. This afternoon, in a market lane, he is loaded with a great many varieties of “reshmi” dhagas and silk threads in shades of saffron, yellow, green, black and yellow. When he walks, he looks like carrying a rainbow on his arms. He also carries a small chair.

“I’ve been selling these for 20 years in this city,” says the courteous hawker, in a low unhawker-like voice, as if he were whispering in your ears. This afternoon he is hovering around the town’s Civil Hospital. He says he often goes to his UP village in Allahabad where he briefly returns to his life with the bangles, selling them in the fairs held on the banks of Ganga.

Santosh recalls his past. “I used to work in a bangle factory in Allahabad, but it closed down, and I came here, along with my family.” He now settles beside a parked auto rickshaw, sitting on his chair. Durga Maa bracelets sell very well, he notes, and so does friendship bands.

The past few years didn’t treat him well. “The bimari drastically reduced my earnings,” he says, referring to the coronavirus pandemic. “For a long time, the streets were no longer as crowded as they used to be.” What Santosh truly wants is to change the very nature of his living. “These small things don’t give me much… but to start something new, you need mota money… where will that come from?”

He stands up, and starts to walk further into the street. “Next month I will go to Allahabad to sell glass bangles in the Magh Mela.”