#IAmAChaturBaniya
Oh, yes, without being apologetic but with due respect to
the Baniya/Business community of India, I proclaim that I am indeed a chatur
baniya (shrewd businessperson). Otherwise, what would you say of a situation when
all my cousins were getting their pocket money, I had to work for it and that
too when I was just ten years old? Mother never believed in giving extra money
to me, whether it was to eat ‘chanachor’(a mix of roasted lentils, nuts,
onions, chillies and salt) or ‘boiled
alu(potato) garnished with tamarind and finely chopped onions’.
So, the chatur baniya in me ideated! I made hand painted
handkerchiefs out of the left-over material from the dresses mother stitched
for the neighbours. I sold them each for five rupees. I was over the moon as I
had enough money to treat my friends.
So, when the fetes in school were organised, I made sure I
had a couple of things to sell. I meticulously created handmade cards out of
pressed ferns, leaves and flowers; hand-embroidered and also painted napkins
and handkerchiefs and also got some potted plants. I was rich by the time the
fete ended.
Since one thing leads to the other, this chatur baniya got
featured in an Assamese magazine a year after she relocated to Guwahati and it
was all about how she made handmade cards. And yippee, I got an order to
deliver five hundred cards to an organisation called Green Plus. All this when
I first started my Pre-University! You guessed right! I spent my earnings
treating my friends to cold coffee and hotdogs!
I knew that my baniya acumen was good when I had my first solo
exhibition of all things hand-made. The principal of a school gave me the space
to showcase my things. The stuff sold off like hot-cakes. Some people even now
proudly comment on how they love ‘showing-off’ to guests at their home some of
the arty things they bought from me when I was in my second year of college. I
made quite a bit at this exhibition!
Cut to 2000! By this time, I had already worked in different
capacities in several corporate houses. I wanted to have something of my own!
And voila, it was an overnight decision to start Siang Valley Production, an
agency which has since then created more than fifteen documentaries. In the
process, I minted money both for myself and several other boys and girls who
had worked with me. Those were happy days for all of us!
Well, this chatur baniya will not stop just at this! Right
now, I am ideating and the next project will be all about making others happy,
whether with or without the financial aspect. This chatur baniya has never
cheated or killed or maimed or hurt anyone while trying to make money. The
principal of living and let live, of ahimsa, of austerity, of simple living and
high thinking will stay alive deep inside this chatur baniya. And that is how
I, Tinat, will keep Gandhiji alive.
Yes, he was a chatur baniya and that is why we live in a
free country. If he didn’t ideate for his people to live in their own country
with their heads held high; doing, thinking, eating, wearing, whatever they
wished to, then, right now, I would have probably been scripting a different
narrative!
