The Raspberry Lady

There is a collection of women in our town; ageless women, homeless women, women with very few teeth. They all seem to have quite the betel nut habit, judging by the color of the teeth they still possess. From what I can see they have at least three means of making a living: begging, selling mushrooms (which a friend told me he once saw the women licking tiny bugs off of), and selling yellow raspberries. These are all seasonal activities, and depending on what happens to be growing at a given time of year you may find yourself interacting with the ladies more or less frequently.

I find one of the most difficult things about living in India to be the moral dilemma of whether or not to support beggars, and therefore the whole begging industry. Of course this issue is not unique to India--I will never forget the man who slept between the Union Station subway and my office building on Fifth Avenue and how much I wanted to help him in some way but never knew how to. He wasn’t a beggar, per se, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have turned down some cash or food, and he was certainly in need of both. Here in India, even after almost two years, I don’t really know where I stand with begging. I mean, there is something horrid about seeing people who clearly have much less of everything than I do and just passing them by, avoiding eye contact or blatantly saying, ‘ille, ille, ma.’ (‘No, no, ma’am.’)

One of the women who lives in town is particularly intriguing to me. She is diminutive and has relatively short hair, dirty and formed into strings, which she wraps around itself into a sort of bun in the back. I like it. She wears a grubby magenta shawl and has bare feet. She’s plucky. One time when our dog Iddli was little we were walking by a spot across from Meenakshi’s where this lady tends to hang out, and she picked him up by the hind leg. Ever since then we give her a wide berth when walking the dog.

It’s raspberry season now, and we’ve taken to buying a few tins full of the sour golden berries most weeks. I like to boil them with some sugar and eat them for breakfast with curd, or for dessert with ice cream. They make a killer crumble, too—tart and bursting with juice.

The magenta lady and I have no real means of communication apart from a combination of sign language and elementary English and Tamil. We count on our fingers for each other, either talking about the time of day I’ll come by the main gate of the school to pick up my berries, or how many tins I’m buying from her this time. Sometimes it seems that she’s yelling at me, but I’m never sure what I’ve done wrong. Maybe it’s just her way.

The other day I missed my appointment to pick up raspberries and caught a load of flack from the lady, but managed to convey to her that she could come by my house later in the day and we’d conduct our transaction then. By the time she came over it was raining, and the dog was none too happy to see her. I guess elephants aren’t the only ones with good memories. The raspberry lady came in and spread her shawl on the floor, where she proceeded to dump tin after tin full of berries onto the cloth. I tried to tell her I only wanted four tins, but she was not happy about this. I’ll never be certain of what she said, but I’m pretty sure it went something like: “I came all the way down here in the pouring rain and you only want four flipping tins?! Not a chance, lady! I’m selling you all eight tins of these berries, whether you like it or not.” And sell them to me she did.

We wound up having to involve the watchman in the transaction, for reasons that remain unclear to me. I think the lady was a bit drunk, actually, and I think she thought I was trying to swindle her. I paid her two hundred rupees (about US $4), which is what eight tins costing twenty-five rupees each comes out to, but maybe math wasn’t her strong suit, because we had to go get the sale witnessed by the watchman in the pouring rain. He confirmed that both of us were happy with our end of the bargain and everyone went away with what they wanted.

We’ve been eating raspberries ever since.