Garbage or goldmine!
I read about the interesting life of a garbage buyer in newspaper.
Before writing about him, let me clarify that in India (and may be in some other countries also) buying garbage is a business, and people selling garbage get good money for the that, depending upon the nature of garbage, unlike countries like USA where people have to pay to clear garbage. I shall write about this later.
A man born in a remote village without much resources, studied only upto 7th came to our city for earning, and adopted the life of a howker and in that of buying garbage by moving house to house (poor and little educated he was, so this was one of a few options for him). Most of garbage he used to receive were paper and books, alongwith steel, plastic and other saleable (because they are recycled) material too. He found that people give away their unnecessary books also as paper garbage, which can be of interest to some other people. Instead of selling out these books as papers for recycling, he started keeping them. At the week end he went to a weekly market where old material is sold, and sat there with books if there were any buyers. For the beginning few weeks no buyer turned up, but later he received attention and started getting buyers (and some sellers also) of old books. He continued with this practice. He was unable to read most of the book, but his inner sense developed and he started sorting the books topic wise, so that the buyers can find what they needed quickly. He not only earned good money in this business, but but also had opportunity of helping many scholars, authors, students and other readers, which is in a way great service to people, as they got the books at almost throw-away prices. His son who obtained master’s degree in college also opted for continuing with father’s business,. Though they are not making big money in this business, but they enjoy the life with this business.
I also used to go to this market and have a collection of many books bought from there (as also some records of singers of first of half of previous century)
Before writing about him, let me clarify that in India (and may be in some other countries also) buying garbage is a business, and people selling garbage get good money for the that, depending upon the nature of garbage, unlike countries like USA where people have to pay to clear garbage. I shall write about this later.
A man born in a remote village without much resources, studied only upto 7th came to our city for earning, and adopted the life of a howker and in that of buying garbage by moving house to house (poor and little educated he was, so this was one of a few options for him). Most of garbage he used to receive were paper and books, alongwith steel, plastic and other saleable (because they are recycled) material too. He found that people give away their unnecessary books also as paper garbage, which can be of interest to some other people. Instead of selling out these books as papers for recycling, he started keeping them. At the week end he went to a weekly market where old material is sold, and sat there with books if there were any buyers. For the beginning few weeks no buyer turned up, but later he received attention and started getting buyers (and some sellers also) of old books. He continued with this practice. He was unable to read most of the book, but his inner sense developed and he started sorting the books topic wise, so that the buyers can find what they needed quickly. He not only earned good money in this business, but but also had opportunity of helping many scholars, authors, students and other readers, which is in a way great service to people, as they got the books at almost throw-away prices. His son who obtained master’s degree in college also opted for continuing with father’s business,. Though they are not making big money in this business, but they enjoy the life with this business.
I also used to go to this market and have a collection of many books bought from there (as also some records of singers of first of half of previous century)
posted by Shashi at 2:21 PM
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