Aid dries up, baba back at his dhaba
NEW DELHI: On a hot May afternoon, Kanta Prasad and his wife Badaami Devi make for a picture of despair as they wait for customers at Baba ka Dhaba, a nondescript roadside eatery in south Delhi’s Malviya Nagar. The sight is a far cry from just a few months ago when a social media campaign, which saw help pouring in from across the globe, seemed poised to end their troubles.
Prasad and his dhaba had become famous overnight last year after a city Youtuber shared a video showing the octogenarian Prasad in tears, telling him how he struggled to make ends meet as business dried up. The viral video led to thousands of people making a beeline to the couple’s eatery for food, selfies and donating money.
Soon, he opened a new restaurant, added a new floor to his house and settled his old debts. However, life has since come a full circle, as the new restaurant closed in February and Prasad and his wife are now back at their old dabha where the sales, which saw a 10-fold jump after the initial Youtube video in October, have slumped drastically over the past few months.
Prasad said the fourth Covid-19 wave in Delhi, which forced the closure of their old dhaba for 17 days, led them to penury, again. “The daily footfall at our dhaba declined because of the ongoing Covid lockdown, and our daily sales have come down from ₹3,500 before the lockdown to ₹1,000 now. The income is not sufficient for our family of eight,” said a dejected Prasad, as he waited for customers.
Prasad had opened his new restaurant with much fanfare on a cold December morning and for the first few days, it was a roaring success. But after the initial frenzy, customers stopped coming. Prasad said he invested ₹5 lakh in the restaurant and incurred a monthly operating expenses of ₹1 lakh. “But the average monthly sales never crossed ₹40,000...In hindsight, I feel we were wrongly advised to open a new restaurant,” he said.
The new enterprise collapsed in three months and Prasad blamed Tushant Adlakha, a social worker who, he said, had encouraged and helped him to open the new restaurant at a rented place. “Essentially it was he (Adlakha) and his team who managed and supervised everything, including the investment and sales. He said he would make it a success, but he never gave enough time for the restaurant,” said Prasad.
Adlakha denied the allegations. “From setting up the restaurant to bringing customers and orders for home delivery of food, we did everything. What else could we do? Prasad’s two sons took charge of the restaurant, but they hardly stayed.”