Delhiwale: Meet the plant lady

A passing glimpse into a street vendor’s life and business on a Delhi street

She looks like Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, deciding she would do the shopping herself. Maybe she’s walking home after a productive excursion in the market. Each arm is weighed down with a bag. But it appears that this sari-clad woman has shopped for plants instead of dresses or books.

Geeta is a hawker of plants. One of the bags around her arms contains mats and seed packets and the other has ropes. (Mayank Austen Soofi)

Wrong. All wrong. Geeta isn’t a shopper, she’s a hawker of plants.

“I have been selling phool-paudhe (flowers and plants) for a long time,” she says, stopping by this central Delhi street, on this pleasantly cool morning.

Both her arms are occupied, and she’s also holding a little tub containing bottled saplings.

“It’s heavy,” she murmurs, shrugging her shoulders. One of the bags around her arms contains mats and seed packets, she informs, and the other has ropes. Sort of strange stuff for a bazaar seller. Geeta explains that she doesn’t walk around the by-lanes like itinerant hawkers, but “I have a stall and I’m going to set it up now.” The mats are spread out on the pavement. The rope is to set up the stall, she says.

Apparently, she also uses some of the ropes to hang a few plants in bottles, so as to catch the attention of potential customers.

In her 50s, Geeta lives near Safdarjung Hospital, with her son and his family. “My son sells plants too, but in a different part of the city. These are not our plants though, but those of a thekedaar (contractor)… We only get the commission from the sales.”

Responding to a query, Geeta admits that her life entails much hard work and not enough material comforts, “but at least I am able to earn, and so is my son, and that makes me satisfied.”

Now a child appears and asks Geeta to identify a sapling.

“It’s called money plant,” she says.

“Isn’t it the one that grows quickly?” he asks.

“Yes, beta (son).”

“I already have them in my terrace,” he declares, and walks away with the smug satisfaction of the wealthy. Geeta quietly goes to the street-side, and watches out for potential customers among the morning’s passersby. Nobody seems interested. She walks on to set up her stall.