The Wild Vegetables Seller

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THE WILD VEGETABLES SELLER

I am not a vegetable seller in the supermarket. Owning a shop there is my far fetched dream. But nobody sells those vegetables in the supermarket that I sell. Because my produce comes not from the farm but the wilderness. So I must sit in a corner of the world, of the market, of the street, of the footpath on a thread bare piece of cloth. This is not my livelihood but I am too old to do anything else. I have no money, no capital. My hard work is all that I own. Two hands very old and wrinkled, feet very worn out with thorns, figure bent and stooped with old age and hair all grey, teeth all gone. I am the seller of vegetables whose names you have heard not. But they are delicious as you can trust my word and people come to me as buyers. 

This is not a profitable business but I must do this to serve something on my plate, to wrap some cloth around my body, to survive in this world made harsh and humiliating for the poor. I used to be a household help in my youth and my husband a daily wage worker. And I would pay for him to drink and get drunk and my sons to grow up. Now my only surviving son is grown up, all the others gone to heaven and my husband with them no more, above eighty as I am and a burden at my own son's door. I must do something to keep the stove flame going and quench my own hungry tummy. 

So I wake up early in the morning and before sunrise. Go to the wild and collect roots, herbs, berries, fruits and vegetables and this is my routine be it summer, winter or rain. They are as neglected plants as I am a neglected person but they thrive any way even without a gardener in nature but I cannot thrive in human society. For these plants feel no care and feel no hate, lush green they get by sap of nature but poverty and sorrow I must face. Nobody to take me and nowhere to go, these plants are what my hands must search. They give me my livelihood and you buy from me for which I am thankful. Wild berries and roots and leaves I sell whose names I know but you can barely tell...

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