A scrap dealer’s shed.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

One morning The Delhi Walla enters the shed of scrap dealer Raju, who uses only one name. The decade-old shed is situated in an open ground in Vasundhara, a suburb of new multistorey apartment buildings just beyond Delhi’s city limits.

Mr Raju says he spends his day pulling his cart from one housing sector in Vasundhara to another. He stops at every apartment complex, calling out loudly, “Kabadi walla, kabadi walla” (“I’m the scrap dealer”), exhorting the residents to give away the junk items of their households to him for cheap.

No wonder then that Mr Raju’s shed looks like a museum of rejects. There is of course the inevitable mound of beer bottles piled up on the muddy ground. A dressing table stands in one corner. So does a steel bookshelf. There is even a bathtub–it is difficult to relate this western bathroom utility to our mug-and-bucket civilisation. There are also tyres, tables, revolving chairs, plastic baskets, a water cooler, a diary, a door and a large tea cup painted with For My True Love.

A giant weighing balance is placed outside the shed.

Mr Raju is ready to start his day. Later in the evening, this place will fill up with new old things.

A link in the chain

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