Better-than-average winter in Mumbai a balm for Covid-hit Tibetan sweater-sellers | Mumbai News – Times of India

MUMBAI: Winter is going but the ice-breakers keep coming. “Are you from Assam?” asks a woman mounting the backseat of a bike after purchasing a bunch of woolen caps and socks from Recho Pelmo. “I’m Tibetan,” replies the 65-year-old hawker from Karnataka.
To which, the man in the front seat nods, “Okay. So, from Arunachal.” Pelmo forgives him. “We are from another country. China has taken over our country,” says the mother of seven as the vehicle exits her low-angle view of the unintentionally-racist city in which she has spent 43 winters, though none this cold.
The record dip in Mumbai’s temperature recently raised the Covid-hit fortunes of Tibetan sweater-sellers – the annual migratory flock that arrives around the same time as the flamingos and departs after three months in February for Losar, the Tibetan New Year. Falling on March 3, the belated festival has prolonged the yearly stay of these seasonal migrants from Karnataka’s Tibetan hotspot of Mundgod, some of whom found themselves being accused of cashing in on the nip in the air. But now, as sellers prepare to vacate their five-or-six-to-a-room shared rental homes in Parel, their cartons appear lighter than they did in 2020.
“I managed to sell off most of my wares from 2019,” says Pelmo, who made Rs 3,000 per day from the lucrative time following “the December day when it rained.” Staring at the tapering lot of Rs 110-each caps, Rs 50-a-pair socks, gloves and mufflers on her second-last business day in the city, Pelmo says she she would’ve made much more if her mat – like that of the Indian male neighbour from Karnataka sitting next to her – had included Rs 500-odd-a-prop jackets and coats. “But those were too heavy to carry,” she says, recalling that she boarded a bus with one of her sons this year.
“Besides, the losses during the pandemic were such that we are still trying to finish off this old lot,” she says, speaking for the loan-reliant fellow matriarchs of Mungdod whose families subsist through the year on profits earned during Mumbai winters.
One such mompreneur, Jamyang Chodon, is seated amidst a fortress of stacked woollens on the footpath near Parel bridge where bargaining involves shouting over relentless honking. “Customers garam ho jaate hain. They say we’ve jacked up the price because of the weather,” says Chodon, a mother of three who – along with her diabetic husband – has been coming to Mumbai for 18 years now. While admitting that sales have been a shade better than last year, she mourns the shrinkage of her primary pre-Covid customer base: people from as far as Kalyan shopping for imminent trips to Manali and Kashmir.
“They have not been travelling because of the lockdown,” says Chodon, whose home budget is coasting along on the concessions extended by “lalas”, as these hawkers refer to the longtime wholesalers of Punjab and Delhi. “They have excused our loans for the past two years,” says Chodon.
At one point, close to 400 sweater sellers would visit the city as early as September to share rooms and sell hand-woven yak and lamb wool garments. Pelmo, who delivered three of her seven kids in Mumbai, even recalls fleeing at the sight of municipal vehicles numerous times, especially when the city was under the scorching scrutiny of former deputy commissioner G R Khairnar.
Over time, though, with the broadening of roads, changes in hawking rules and ageing of the sweater-selling matriarchs, the number of Tibetan vendors has shrunk to barely 50. Many vanished after the BMC issued a notice banning woollen sweater sellers from CST fresh in the wake of the Elphinstone Bridge stampede of 2018 that killed several people.
Today, besides the jackets of sweater-vending migrants from North India, their wholesale woollens must compete with the digital marketplace, too, as customers tend to show them pictures of jackets they want on their phones. “Our kids are not built for this line,” says Pelmo. Chodon, whose eldest lost her job as an airhostess during the pandemic and whose two younger kids are studying in Mumbai, agrees.
“I didn’t go to school so I had no other choice,” says Chodon, whose tongue trips over the word “entrance” – the exam her son is preparing for. “But you can’t survive without education these days,” adds Chodon, explaining why she continues to sell sweaters in the city that calls her people Nepalese and “even Chinese.”