Doctor
As a child, Ramakrishnan Gupta always wanted to be a doctor. He was the top student in the village and his parents were very proud of him. Everyone expected lot from him. He was like the village trophy. His father was poor but was always supportive of Ramu going to college to fulfill his dream to become a doctor. His mother had died during child birth.
Before Ramu could go to college, his father died because of TB and Ramu was left alone. Everyone in the village was very sorry for his unfortunate loss and treated him with sympathy. He decided that this was not going to stop him. He went to the big city and got an admission in a medical college where he performed badly and couldn’t cope up. The village education hadn’t been enough to start with.
He was expelled after two years of college after getting warnings to improve his grades but he just couldn’t. He had nothing to do, nowhere to go. He did odd jobs in the city earning enough cash to just scrape through his meals. In one of his jobs he met a person who made fake documents: licenses, school documents, certificates. an idea came to Ramakrishnan’s head. He got a false certificate made on his name that he had become a doctor. Then he went back to the village and started hid practice.
That was a long time ago, about 20 years. Now he was well settled, and a respected person in the village. Everyone in the village came to him for their problems and to add to their trust, he didn’t overcharge. And now his life was going to change completely. Now another youngster of the village who had actually gone to college, knew about Guptaji’s truth. And now he threatened to tell the elders…
Auto Driver
As a child, Arvind Desai(AD) was as normal as any other in the slums. He would play in the garbage dumps and keep stray dogs as pets, and constantly be in trouble. He had a bunch of friends and a bunch of enemies. His parents had menial jobs and could just about get by every day.
When he was 18, his uncle suggested that he should start driving an auto-rickshaw. He took a loan from a friend and started. Soon, He was making more money than expected. Just about enough to buy another auto. But he had a loan to pay off.
People were surprised when they saw a new auto parked next to the old one. They were also surprised when his friend, from whom he had borrowed money, was found dead with a slit throat but they never connected the two. He hired someone to drive the old auto.
Arvind Desai had become the leader of a large group of auto-rickshaws. He hired more and more people to work under him. He had become rich but still lived in the slums. He continued driving autos.
The memory of his dead friend still haunted him and he grew more and more irritable. Like any auto driver though, he disliked people who gave him big notes instead of small change. His irritation evolved into a psychotic loathing. He took out his frustration on a poor college going boy who gave him a hundred rupee note. He murdered the boy and took all his change.
I created a senario map of where the flower vender would go in a residential area. I used SFS 208 colony as a reference to create the map. And the tiny dots are the houses where he sells the plants. I have used the enhancements I created in this senario.
Flower Vender:
We met him as we were walking towards the mattress shop. All he had was a cart with potted plants. He comes from a village which is far away he did not say where. He has a brother back in the village who takes care of the nursery, where they grow the plants. They take turns to try and sell the plants.
He did not have a set area or location to which he goes to everyday. He said that he goes to random places to sell the plants. The prices of the plants vary according to what flower they hold. It starts at 30rs for an unpotted plant. And for 60rs you get a potted plant. He also said that he has his good days and bad ones.
Tender coconut vendor:
We went up to the coconut vendor and ordered one for each of us. By the time he finished the third coconut, we smiled and started sweet talking him telling him how swift he is at chopping the coconut. He smiles and said that it al came with practice.
Since our strategy of starting to ask questions was successful, slowly we started asking questions about his strategy to run his business. His name was Mahesh. Every day he got his coconuts on the way to the airport. he had two ‘thelas’, one where he kept the uneaten coconuts and the other where he kept the broken and eaten coconuts. most of the day he stayed in the same spot even though he had wheels. This was because he got a lot of orders from the families living in SFS. Sometimes, he said, he even went to other places in the evening to catch the tired workers who were heading back home.
Cobbler:
Our approach to gaining information about this example was to sit a little distance from her and observe the happenings and figure out her strategies without even talking to her.
The cobbler sits at a junction near a bus stop on a busy main road. She works quickly and can fix your shoe problems on the spot. Though it isn’t too apparent, cobblers are territorial. They cover an area among a bunch of them and cannot go to another place where another cobbler already has a stall. Some will collaborate and if one of them gets more work, they pass it to another in their group. Often these groups are family.
But for sitting in the hot sun for so many hours, the meager income of 200-300 a day doesn’t seem worth it.
Mattresses:
The mattress shop is already established. They have a small shop next to a drugstore in a market with a sewing machine and cotton separating machine.
They buy their cotton from Kamakshi Playa and Vijay Playa where they get wholesale cotton. These places get the cotton from Tamilnadu. They clean and separate the cotton in a machine and start stuffing it in the thick covering materials. After sewing it, the mattress is dusted by hitting it with a stick.
They get orders and they make mattresses and pillows. The customer has to come back and pick up the order so they don’t have to worry about transporting the mattresses. They started off by taking a loan to buy the machines. Now they are working at a profit of Rs.10,000 a month and the loan has been taken care of.
Rolls Corner:
Gajodhar has been there for about 2 years. Before that he lived in Bhopal and had to move to Bangalore because of some personal reasons. His family is in Bhopal. He keeps sending them money. The shop is in a residential area with a row of shops. There is one guy who makes the dough, the other guy makes the roti’s and there are 2 guys who roll them and also take orders from the customers.
Their skill is to break the eggs in one hand and make the rolls fast enough so that the customers don’t have to wait for a long time. Their strategy is to half cook the roti’s in their free time since there are many customers in the evening.
