Sharp as ever
At 3.30am, 51-year-old S Sayedan, leaves his home in Thiruvalangadu, Thiruvallur district. He boards the 4am train and after a two-hour journey, reaches Chennai Central, from where he boards the bus to Thiruvanmiyur. He then picks up his knife sharpening machine, weighing 10 kilograms, and begins to walk through the neighbourhood.
‘Kathi aruvaaa... saana pudikaradhu’, he announces his arrival every morning at 7am. “I was 15 when my father, who made traditional grinding stones, suggested that I get a saana machine (a knife sharpening whetstone fitted to a wheel) and make a livelihood out of it. I liked the idea of going to different parts of Chennai, and agreed instantly.” For the last 35 years, six days a week, he has been covering South Madras. Now due to age, he restricts himself to ECR, OMR and parts of Thiruvanmiyur, where he has loyal customers. He leaves his machine at a mosque on ECR or at any of his regular customers’ residences.
“If I earn ₹1,000, I can make ends meet. Ever since the pandemic, people are fearful to step out of their homes and even chide me for travelling all the way during such times. But then this is the only work I know. How can I survive without the income?” he asks.
After one-and-a-half months, he has returned to work. “I managed to wade through the lockdown depending entirely on rice provided in ration shops. Since the lockdown was lifted, I feel a sense of relief, getting back to my routine of taking the first train to Chennai,” he says.
Sayedan recognises that knife sharpening is a thing of the past. “Only those who use sickle and kitchen knives made of iron continue to use our services. It is a heritage that we are keeping alive. I plan to continue with this work as long as I can carry this machine.”
- By Chitradeepa Anantharaman
Look good, feel good
Jeevitha S is disillusioned by one year of online classes. On finishing her Corporate Financial Reporting semester exam, the 19-year-old strolls to Pretty and Passion beauty parlour in Kilpauk. For the past month, she has been training here in cosmetology. After last week’s unlock, when the parlour opened for business again, it was finally showtime.
“We have had 70 to 80 clients or more in these 10 days, and most of them came for eyebrows,” says Jeevitha. “You can give yourself a facial, or a haircut, but very few people know how to do their own eyebrows. It is supposed to be one of the toughest skills to pick up.”
Jeevitha’s manager told her it would take a month to learn, but with so much practice in the last week, on people who emerged from lockdown with brows growing out in all shapes, Jeevitha feels like a pro already.
What she really wants to be, is a make-up artist — “Make-up gives you confidence. When you look good, you feel good. But if I want to open my own salon someday, which is my end goal, I can’t just know how to do make-up, I have to learn other cosmetology skills too. I need the experience of dealing with different kinds of people, who can be rude or kind to me,” she says.
Always on the lookout for guinea pigs for her experiments, Jeevitha spares nobody in her family — not even her paati — to apply make-up to. “My grandmother asks ‘Why don’t you study this, professionally?’ Then my mom glares at her, and says, ‘Don’t put ideas into her head’.”
Her mother was initially hesitant about her training as a beautician, but Jeevitha insisted. “I don’t think I’m learning much through online classes. This way, I can get closer to my dream of being independent, and being my own boss.”
She hopes she can work as a make-up artist for Tamil cinema one day. “I like Vijay anna a lot, he’s already so handsome, and I can make him even more so,” she smiles and then says, “But I know I can’t directly go to the top floor, I will have to take it step by step.”
- By Sweta Akundi
Iron Man steams ahead
“With Work From Home, people do not need ironing,” says V Vishnu, “Even for online meetings, the bosses don’t care how you look as long as work is done.” Fortunately, he adds, his neighbours still want their saris, shirts and trousers looking crisp: “In T Nagar, where we are based, we are now ironing for the lawyers, doctors and medical shop owners who still go out to work everyday.”
Lockdown was especially tough on Vishnu, and his partners. Together with his wife Kanakadurga and college friend Ramesh Palaniappan, he launched Madras Ironing Company just before the pandemic hit. “We started in October 2019 with five employees, offering steam ironing, laundry and dry cleaning services. By February 2020, we were doing about 500 clothes a day. Then the lockdown began in March, and there was nothing at all.”
As lockdown eased, they began looking for work close by. “All the shops around us struggled. A few started to sell saris online via Facebook and WhatsApp, so we would iron those. But sales were slow, as marriage halls closed,” says Vishnu.
He adds, “Our main customers stopped. The IT companies are on Zoom only, hostels are shut, many youngsters have left Chennai to work from their home towns.”
Nevertheless, he has no regrets. “These kind of things happen in life. Whatever problems there are, we have to get through. We are ringing up old customers now, reminding them of our services. As banks, shops and offices reopen, their clothes are slowly coming back for ironing.”
- By Shonali Muthalaly
There’s always a cup for you
Tea never stopped flowing at Chandra Tea Stall, sandwiched between the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and Ramco Systems in Adyar. It used to operate 24x7 for customers — from college students and security guards to daily wagers — who dropped in either to have a quick bite or a comforting glass of tea. Until the pandemic.
The stall, which reopened for business recently, now operates during the hours specified by the Government. Not much has changed with regard to everyday operations, says its proprietor C Arjunan. What has changed, however, is that they now wash the entire shop with turmeric water, lemon and salt, given the pandemic. “We used to keep hand sanitisers at the shop, but it started to produce a pungent odour,” he says.
Arjunan has over 25 employees working for him in two of his stalls, the other one being in Thiruvanmiyur. He had to let go of a few, due to lockdowns.
“We used to make somewhere between ₹5,000-6,000 a day in pre-COVID times, but now we are making a meagre ₹1,000. Today, we only see about 25% of our customers.”
Of course, there is a lull in the business and the stall is primarily functioning hand-to-mouth. But they hope to get back their steady customer base from the nearby institutions and also, from Cancer Institute. Says Arjunan, “A lot of people with cancer used to come before and sometimes I wouldn’t charge them. Because I lost my mother to cancer.”
- By Srivatsan S