Who cares if it cools!

Islamabad

Come summer and you can find hundreds of varieties of ‘soft’ drinks in the market – from the imported ones to the locally manufactured. Since people mistakenly think they quench thirst but mainly because most of them taste darn good, those selling them do a roaring business. Of course the multi-nationals pocket much of the profits, what with their fancy advertising luring the youth and children but other companies and private entrepreneurs don’t do badly either.

Keeping this in mind and the fact that it’s getting hotter by the day, what the young man is selling and how much he makes is not so hard to believe, seeing the rush at his cart, yet it seems improbable. Well, he says he earns Rs 800 a day net profit! He has three big red buckets on his hand drawn cart. One filled with ‘clean,’ cold water – heaven knows where he gets it from - the other with water to wash glasses and the third with his ‘Imli-Aloo Bokhara Pani’ (tamarind and sour dried plum concoction). Now these two fruits are both sour but are known for their cooling properties and make a popular drink in summer, so you can see a number of young men doing business in this local cold drink all over the city. It may not be healthy and cause diarrhoea but who cares as long as it cools, albeit temporarily!

This lad sells peanuts in winter but the take home result is not as good, so he likes the summer better, even though he has to sit in the heat till his drink is exhausted – which is round about lunch time and according to him about a hundred glasses are sold daily. I told him it did not look as if he had a hundred glasses of the drink in the bucket, so he laughed and said he just adds more ice as time goes by and no one notices the weak taste, they are so thirsty by then! Ice is available from a shop nearby.

It looks as if this chap is going to be a canny business person when he moves on from this line of work as he hopes to do after saving enough money. Asked why he did not study, he said he left after class five due to family problems and now he would not like to study further as many young men who had gone to school had no jobs. If he really earns as much as he says he does, you cannot blame him!