The Hindu Business Line : The world of buy & sell

He jumps into the first class compartment at Kandivili station, takes the pole position in the aisle, unhinges his mobile from his belt and places it on his heart, lips and head mumbling a prayer. He then puts the first call of the day to his broker with his palm cupping the mobile. If you stand close to him, which invariably happens in Mumbai locals, one can hear him placing buy and sell orders for shares of companies listed on the bourses.

Something binds the initial prayer chant to the roll call of scrips. A smile is a sure sign of the day having started well and that moment he recognises you with a nod; otherwise, he packs his mobile and gazes grimly at the marketmen crowding round him. He should be around 35 with strands of white hair on his pate outnumbering the black. He has on him all the newspapers vomited by the city, pink and non-pink. He rarely gets off his mobile and could be the showpiece (of course, not a Dhoni) for any telecom company. I do not know his name. We swap smiles and that's it.

Today, he had two mobiles, one for each ear and was talking into them at the same time. "Why two? Is it to know the election results?" one asked him after being sure it was one of his good moments. "I don't care for politics. Today the listing bell of Reliance Petroleum will be sounded and I want to play the scrip. I am keeping the second mobile free to place orders," he said.

These days most (including ladies) in the first and second-class compartments have two to three mobiles and I have not understood their gameplan. We sure are desperate talkers. In the local today none mentioned the five assembly election results. It did not bother them. They have a chance to make money and they did not want to lose out. Any observer will note that most newspaper readers, at least in Mumbai locals, do not bother about the news; rather, they turn to the stock pages and mark down with red and green ink the prices of shares they are interested in. Bylines and scoops do not matter for them. They can download in a minute the current quotes of at least 50 scrips and their price movements.

All the deals are done volubly over mobiles to loudly proclaim the coming of the middle class investor, mobile in every sense - two mobiles pasted to the ears with the hands on the steering of a Maruti Swift to touchdown on any part of the world. This species is worth pondering over.

He gets up by around 6.30 in the morning, if he has not swung at a bar overnight. Clothed in the going brand of T-shirts, jeans and bright Nike shoes, he sets out to the nearby club with badminton racquet and a quick glance round to see if the world is watching him. On the way he will hail his friends with a Hari Om or Jai Matadi. The tired gentleman comes home by around 8 after playing five minutes of badminton (with the rest going for political and business gossip to help buy shares). By 9.30, he slides into the driver's seat, straps himself, switches on the Gayatri CD and switches it off to spew a foul abuse on the car overtaking him, and is at his office by 11. It's a long day of fake promises and quick money.

After his exit, his wife gets busy with her business of marketing aloe syrup (the remedy of the times assuring relief for everything from cold to cancer) or saris shipped in from wholesale markets. To keep her 105 kg frame fit, she goes for a morning walk well attired as if she was heading for a party, with most of the time resting on the cement seats below shady rain trees in Borivili. It will be cruel on one's part to expect her to move her limbs.

The lady squeezes into a Maruti Zen (bought by her husband as a birthday gift) and for which she is ever grateful. The ayah or a poor kid brought in from distant Rajasthan or Kutch minds the children, cleans up the premises and takes a few beatings for work improperly done - all for free. When outside the lady can be heard telling her friends, "Main, mere ayah ko mere bachhe ke saman dekhta hoon (I look after my ayah like my child)."

On vacations, they visit a few temples or tourist spots. Back home, they will invite one for tea and samosas to show the shots taken by their digital camera. Some of them can be weird like her husband riding a tiger.

"My husband paid for a ride on a tiger in Kanha tiger sanctuary," she will tell you. It can be pretty boring but they are one's neighbours. As one gets up to depart, the lady will come up with prasad of some famous temple and add, "Kitna sunder mandir hai. Humlog hundi mein do lakh dala (What a beautiful temple. We dropped Rs 2 lakhs in the hundi)."

Their children are driven mad to score 200 marks out of 100 in computer science. Their parents decide on their jobs, their wives and husbands like it happened to them many years ago. They are India's face of reforms.

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