Garbage or goldmine! 

        I had read about the interesting life of a garbage buyer in newspaper.

Before writing about him, let me clarify that in India (and may be in some other countries also) buying garbage is a business, and people selling garbage get good money for the that, depending upon the nature of garbage, unlike countries like USA where people have to pay to clear garbage. I shall write about this later.

        A man born in a remote village without much resources, studied only up to 7th grade came to our city for earning and adopted the business as a hawker. His business was buying garbage by approaching house to house (poor and little educated he was, so this was one of a few options before him). Most of garbage he used to receive were papers and books, along with steel, plastic and other recyclable material too. He found that people give away their unnecessary books also as paper garbage, which can be of interest to some other people. Instead of selling out these books as waste papers for recycling, he started keeping them. At the week end he went to a weekly market where old material is sold, and sat there with books to see if there were any buyers. For few weeks no buyer turned up, but later he got attention and started getting buyers of old books.

        I would like to mention that I was also a frequent visitor to such weekly market in search of interesting books at a throw-away price and I have a collection of many classic books bought from this market. I also had collected some gramophone records (initial was version of CD) from this market.

        The man continued with this practice. He was unable to read most of the book, but he started sorting the books topic wise, so that the buyers can find what they needed easily and quickly. He not only earned good money in this business, but also had opportunity of helping many scholars, authors, students and other readers.  This was a great service to people, as they got the books at almost throw-away prices. His son who obtained master’s degree in college also opted for continuing with father’s business. Though they are not making big money in this business, but they enjoy the life with this business.

(This was written in October, 2006)

Addition:

About The weekly market known as Gujari Bazar

Ahmedabad's Gujari Bazaar, is invaluable part of Ahmedabad's cultural heritage. A 597 year old trader-organized market, democratically governed by member-elected Ahmedabad Gujari Association (AGA), comprises Hindu, Muslim and significant portion of women traders.