Double thrill.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Delhi has hundreds of thousands of street carts. Thousands of them sell cooling drinks through the brutal summer months. This cart is different.

It offers two kinds of drinks. Nothing unusual in that. One metal container holds lemon sherbet; the other is filled with rose sherbet. Nothing unusual in that either. The containers are unusual. Both bear eye-catching drawings and labels, almost like the work of a trained artist. The style feels familiar, as if seen elsewhere too. Is the cart owner the artist?

“No,” says Rajesh, the soft-spoken man manning the stall. “These were painted by some chalta firta painter,” he explains, describing the artist as a sort of street vagabond. The artwork was anyway executed six or seven years ago.

Rajesh has been selling cooling drinks on Delhi’s streets for nearly 30 years. For a long time, he set up his stall in Old Delhi’s Meena Bazar, the chaotic market outside the eastern gates of Jama Masjid. Later, he shifted to a less chaotic spot outside Gate No. 1 of the Jama Masjid Metro Station, soon after the underground line reached the area.

Like many seasonal vendors in the city, Rajesh operates his cart only during the summer months from March to July. For the rest of the year, he returns to his village in Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh. “There, I sell vegetables,” he says.

Why not stay in the village during the summer and sell cooling drinks there?

Rajesh shakes his head. “These kinds of drinks don’t work in the village. People there drink lassi or mathha, which they make at home from the milk of their own cows.” Lemon juice or rose sherbet, he explains, are better suited to a city like Delhi, where “factories, cars, and roads produce more heat.” It makes business sense, he says, to pause vegetable selling during these months. “In the summer, people in the city, especially those working outdoors, are exhausted from the heat, and I get good sales.”

A customer arrives. As Rajesh prepares a glass of lemon sherbet, the gaze drifts toward the containers, settling on a small marking painted near the bottom. It turns out to be a signature, bearing the name of Shakee… but Shakeel Artist is no “chalta firta!” A signboard painter, he is perhaps Old Delhi’s greatest living icon (already profiled on this page). Almost every hand-painted hoarding in the Walled City bears his mark. And here this legendary figure is modestly marking his presence on Rajesh’s modest cart, helping advertise drinks meant to bring relief to us heat-afflicted citizens. This is double thrill. Rajesh stands from 10am to 7pm.