Water Harvesters

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In our small towns in AP in our childhood, there were these few curious families: they practically owned the entire Gold Ornament Business in addition to Clothes Stores.

The males wore their Dhotis differently than my father...they were forward-backward symmetric. The ladies wore their saris with their pallus on the wrong side unlike my mother; and they covered their heads with bright and flowery veils. And they spoke something like Hindi but not the chaste Hindi we learned at school. Their kids spoke Telugu with a sweet li'l accent and got back home at dusk abandoning their games midway...

It was only much later that I came to know that they were Marwaris from Rajasthan settled all the way down deep South towns for generations.

When I joined IIT KGP, I faced bright li'l kids with quaint surnames like Mittal, Singhania, Maheswari...all of them extremely well-behaved and studious without being odiously pretentious.

Then I came to know that they came from families wealthy enough to buy a dozen gpses hired by IIT KGP @ Rs 375 + DA.

And about their Birlas, Dalmias, Bajajs...with their vast Business Empires, Temples, Institutes of Technologies, Planetariums....

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In KGP Gole Bazaar there is a Marwari Dry Fruits Shop which I used to visit every Sunday. It was owned by a dhoti-clad vermilion-foreheaded short and stout Patriarch.

One day I found a new local Sales-Urchin in the shop and asked as usual for a packet of cashew nuts: "Ek packet kaju dedo!".

The urchin innocently queried: "Bada ya chota?" (Large or small?).

I then heard a big thump on the back of his tiny head: "Bada de do...poochna mat!" (Push the large one; don't ask!), implying "Let them refuse the large one".

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In our nukkad in Hyderabad we have a Marwari Business Family. They own three contiguous Stores: Provisions, Medicines, Cell Phones and such. They all live together palatially behind their Stores almost incognito.

They are four elderly brothers, their wives, sons, daughters, grandkids...all trained to sit in all the Counters and man their Business as and when need arises.

They have two Helpmates imported from their Village in Rajasthan; smart youth practically living as family members.

One morning I was in their Front Provision Stores to purchase toothpicks. The Counter was being manned by a young Bahurani (D-i-L) of the Family.

She stopped a Cart-Wheeler with his Cart full of spring onions. He was shouting: Rs 20 a kilo...

She stared at him; and he whispered: "Maajee, Rs 15 for you only". She whispered back: "10". After a few curt exchanges, they settled for Rs 11. The Cart Chap asked: "How many kilos?". She replied: "Download the entire Cart".

The Cart-Wheeler jumped with joy. Her Helpmate assisted. The Cart-Wheeler ran back with his Cart to Chintalbasthi Wholesale Market for a second helping for folks older than me at their doorsteps at Rs 20 a kilo.

The Bahurani ordered her Helpmate to separate the small ones for the Family Kitchen and dump the big ones in the Drum to be sold to folks like me at Rs 15 a kilo.

It is win-win for all: I get a Blog @ toothpicks...

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The only time Marwaris got bad publicity was a few years back when a Family Will was disputed and the entire thing spilled over into the wildly jubilant Newspapers which displayed the Birla Family Tree with all its sumptuous branches.

That reminded me of the Vanderbilt Convention:

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Frank Sullivan: The Vanderbilt Convention:

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"....Suppose we start all over again and get this thing straight. Let's begin once more with the doughty old Commodore. He married, first, Sophia Johnson, and, second, Frances Crawford. William Henry Vanderbilt was their son. Not the William Henry Vanderbilt who gives all the clambakes; the other one, the one who married Maria Louisa Kissam.

Now, if William Henry and Maria Louisa Kissam, after getting married, had let it go at that, things wouldn't have become so complicated. But they didn't. They had issue: eight children. These eight children had children and these children in turn had children, so that in due course of time there came to be so many Vanderbilts that the family became known as the Vanderbilt Convention. And the doughty old Commodore had started practically on a shoestring.

Now then. What I am trying to do here is simply to give an explanation of which Vanderbilt is which, so that the reader who is interested may be able to distinguish them.

Damn it all, why the hell should people want to distinguish the Vanderbilts, anyhow? This country is supposed to be a democracy, isn't it?...."

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I read that the secret of the Marwari grip on Business is the fact that they hail from Villages of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan with its scanty rainfall.

Those who know how to conserve every drop of water, the Wellspring of Life, know how to conserve every coin.

No wonder that our nukkad Marwaris' profits come mostly from the 30-liter Water Cans they sell like hot cakes in Hyderabad where there is a perennial water shortage due to the ever-leaking civic water pipes.

It is a different matter that a couple of months back there were untold floods in their Rajasthan Desert Towns due to Cyclone Phet (also in Pakistan):

.....Of course due to Faithless Customers like me who don't much care for the archeologically proven fact that Raamjee was born precisely @ that sweet spot at Ayodhya....

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