I am…Susie Babu

March 25, 2015 05:25 pm | Updated 05:25 pm IST - Thiruvananthapuram

Susie Babu,  Ice-cream vendor at Shanghumughom beach Photo: Nita Sathyendran

Susie Babu, Ice-cream vendor at Shanghumughom beach Photo: Nita Sathyendran

Occupation: Ice-cream vendor

Would you like a plain cone ice-cream? I have chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry toppings… Or perhaps you would like a strawberry double stick ice-cream, with vanilla inside and strawberry flavoured ice outside? I also have mango double, raspberry double, and lemon double. How about our bestseller ‘chocotop’ cone or the old favourite, a chocobar?

You know, I have been selling ice-creams here at Shanghumughom beach for 14 years now. Over the years I have seen the tastes of the city change from chocobars and cup and ball ice-creams, at Rs. 10 and Rs. 5 respectively, to exotic and expensive varieties such as sundaes and pre-packaged cones. My customers are people from all walks of life, mostly families and college-goers on a fun evening out at the beach. I also have many customers who drive up in their expensive cars just to have an ice-cream by the beach.

It’s busy all year around, especially during the holiday season and more so in the summer. The rush hasn’t really begun right now, but we expect it will pick up in the coming weeks. To catch the crowds, I open at 10 a.m. and close only at 10 p.m. It’s no hassle as I live nearby and I only have to push the cart a short distance. From the first week of April till the monsoon comes, the beach will be jam-packed with people, from afternoon till late in the night. That is when business is busiest. In fact, it’s so brisk that I have to keep replenishing my stock four to five times a day. To replenish stock, I just call the distribution agency and they bring the products over in a jiffy – their freezer go down is nearby.

It’s the same story at all the other ice-cream carts on this stretch of the beach. I am one of the 33 ice-cream cart vendors on this stretch of the beach and I was the eighth one to set up shop. Incidentally, all of the vendors are women. The handful of men you might see behind the cart would most likely be the husbands, sons or relatives, filling in for them, for one reason or the other.

We have a fair system in place that enables each of us to get a slice of the pie, so to speak. We rotate our positions each week, starting from the paved walkway at the far end of the beach all the way up to Shanghumughom junction. There would be roughly 10 metres between each cart, or the space to park a couple of vehicles.

Thanks to this cart of mine – yes, I own the cart, as do most of the other vendors – I lead a comfortable life. I began working when I was in such dire straits that I was on the brink of giving up on life. My husband is unemployed and an alcoholic to boot and I had two children, Suji and Sujith, to look after. I was a brilliant student but there was nobody to buy me books or send me to school, so I was determined that my kids, at least, should complete their education. Today, I am proud to say that both of them are graduates. My daughter has done the lab technician course and my son is an electronics graduate. Both of them are now looking for jobs.

I have a few health issues and the only thing that worries me is that the Government does not recognise us vendors. That means there is no scope for financial aid. My biggest expense is actually charging the cart. The electricity bill at home comes to thousands of rupees a month, which I can ill afford. If not anything else, if only the government could give us a rebate on that…

(A weekly column on the men and women who make Thiruvananthapuram what it is)

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