The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Leading their lives with the leftovers

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Thursday, Jul 03, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Leading their lives with the leftovers

— Photo: K. Ganesan

compulsion: A woman doing brisk business with the leftovers taken from city hotels.

If you step into Melavaasal area at around 2 a.m. you will be in for a surprise. There will be rows of people sleeping with a plate and bowl. They, of course, use their hand or a pile of waste and tattered clothes as pillows. If you look further up, a queue of bowls will come into view.

Why plates and bowls? It may be understood if it is pots and buckets. The bowls are in line to fill the hungry stomachs that are asleep.

“We line up our vessels to have our dinner around 2 a.m. and, sometimes, it serves as breakfast too,” says P. Mariammal, a daily wage earner, who is engaged in all kinds of menial jobs.

The food, these people get are the ‘unsolds’ from hotels.

“Do you think we can cook food at home for a six-member family with this skyrocketing inflation? It is unthinkable,” says 60-year-old Mariammal.

She has been living on hotel leftovers that meet the requirements of her family, especially when prices of essential commodities are looking up.

She will need at least Rs.70 to 80 to prepare an ordinary meal at home for her six-member family. “If I can spend Rs.25 to 30 on the leftovers it is enough,” she notes.

Her total income is Rs.1000 per month which allows only a deficit budget. Except for notebooks, she never spends on education for all her three children as the school do not demand any fees.

Selling hotel leftovers is the only major source of income for the family of T. Parvathi. She vends unsold food collected from hotels by her husband and 15-year-old son, who is a school dropout.

“My husband goes in the night while my son takes care of cleaning work in hotels during the day. I sell food both in the evening and early morning and get Rs.50 to 60 daily. The total income amounts to Rs.1500 which is being judiciously spent on daily requirements.” She has admitted her three children in a nearby hostel.

P. Jayalakshmi’s family earnings come to Rs.2000 through selling hotel leftovers. “Hotels where we work offer us leftover food and the money we get by selling it is our salary,” she says.

She sells food three times a day. Jayalakshmi sells rice and sambar for Rs.2 each and a special dosa for Rs.3. Apart from these items, they also sell variety rice and vegetables.

“We work in a place and they pay us in the form of tasty food. We again sell the food to earn the money for our labour. We are destined to work twice a day to reap the fruits of our labour,” she says.

Luck dawns daily in the lives of cleaners of vegetarian hotels unlike those who work in non-vegetarian hotels. M. Saraswathy says that she gets leftover food occasionally in the form of ‘parottas’ and ‘briyani’ from non-vegetarian hotels.

Matter of survival

M. Amutha’s family believes that food and work are more important as it does not have a regular monthly income. The family’s earnings are spent wholly on food and sundry expenses and not on education.

“Survival is our priority and not education. Who will feed the stomach, which never fails to win the brain?” Amutha, who allows her 13-year-old son to accompany his father to work, poses.

For these people one of the major sources of expenditure that pushes them into debt is family function. To meet these unavoidable expenses they borrow money for exorbitant interest and sometimes repay the loan on a daily basis.

They do not spend on medical expenses either. Whenever they are in need, they go for self-medication and if the situation warrants visit the nearest Government hospital.

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