A woman and her greens
Simon Khatoon’s daily expedition to get vegetables from the mandi
The woman in white sooti (cotton) sari is walking erect, with a big sack on her head. She is carrying it with confidence, showing neither fear nor instability as she wades through the lanes of this central Delhi neighbourhood. Even more astonishing is that she is balancing it without the aid of her arms.
On being stopped and complimented for this skill, she smiles, but without shaking her head, which stays as still as statue. “I have been doing it for years at this time of the morning,” says Simon Khatoon modestly. In her 60s, she is heading home after filling up her sack with vegetables for the day. Each day, at dawn, she leaves her home and walks for about a mile to the vegetable mandi where “I never buy any tarkari (vegetables),” she clarifies. She instead picks up the vegetables that accidentally fall off from “trucks and lorries” as they are transferred by the labourers from the vehicles to the mandi stalls. The vegetables come from Azadpur subzi mandi, from where most of Delhi gets its greens.
“This way I don’t have to spend money, and nobody suffers any loss,” says the woman, explaining that most of the veggies she picks up from the ground tend to be rotten and thus unsaleable—“but I slice off the rotten parts and the rest of the saag-subzi tastes fine.”
Ms Khatoon lives with her son, and is the family’s only breadwinner. She works as a part-time housemaid and dishwasher in a few households. Her husband died years ago, she says. “We had come from Patna.”
Ms Khatoon’s sack shows an emperor-like figure holding a rose, beside a dish of steaming rice—the branding suggests it originally belonged to a basmati rice company.
At this hour the street is empty. The woman’s eyes scan 180 degrees, as if searching for anything. Responding to a query, she expresses her relief that all her daughters are married. “One lives in Khajuri, another in Shastri Park...,” she lists, referring to various Delhi neighbourhoods. It’s her son for whom, she says, she continues to work even in her advancing years. “He cannot see… so he stays at home all the time.”
Now, raising her eyes upwards, she mutters “today I got a bit of matar, a bit of tamatar and a lot of gobhi.” Her voice suggests satisfaction. She starts walking again, her head perfectly still.
The Noida authority on Wednesday said it had formed quick response teams to deal with complaints over the city’s cleanliness.
To be launched on Thursday, two teams will inspect and clean dustbins along the city’s key roads, eight will clean drains, four will ensure disposal of construction waste and two will look after sanitation in the city’s public toilets.
“We have teams to make sure each nook and corner is cleaned properly,” said S C Mishra, senior project engineer of the Noida authority.
The authority’s chief executive officer, Ritu Maheshwari, formed these teams in order to perform better in ongoing 2021 Swachhta survey. The city was ranked the cleanest in Uttar
Pradesh, but was 25th overall under the Swachh Survekshan 2020, an annual ministry of housing and urban affair survey. This time the authority aims to jump the cleanliness rank.
The authority will also release a Whatsapp helpline number -- 9717080605 -- over which complaints may be registered with regard to sanitation issues in the city. The designated team will respond within four hours of the complaint registration, said officials.
The team will include sanitation workers.
The authority has also invited applications from college students for an internship with the health department. It will select 12 students who will then be engaged in spreading awareness on waste management. It has also set up suggestions centres in sectors 11 (H-block), the MCD office in sector 18, at the vending zone in sector 50, a mall in sector 62, at the Shilp Haat in sector 33A, the commercial market in sector 104 and HCL sector 126.
We have teams to make sure each nook and corner in the city is cleaned properly.
S C MISHRA, senior project engineer, Noida Authority