Life on the Street

Where commuters see a perceptual traffic jam, he sees a business opportunity. He acquires roses in bulk, to sell to people waiting impatiently for the traffic lights to change. He doesn't sell the flowers himself- he oversees the fleet of children and women who do the actual selling. He doles out bunches of flowers to them, collects the money, pays them their share, and gives advice on selling techniques.

A few years back, he was a flower seller himself. One of those grimy faced, but cheerful boys who presses a bunch of flowers wrapped in cellophane against your car window, and bargains cheerfully with you on the price even as you tell him you don't even want the flowers. 

He is functionally illiterate, though he can add, subtract and calculate discounts faster than the well educated commuters he sells to. He may not know much beauty in his life, but his aesthetic sensibilities are high when it comes to arranging flowers into fetching bouquets.

Hard work, an ability to asset himself, and a few lucky breaks have pushed him up the value chain- he now makes more money than he did as a seller, but it is not enough.

He is a street dweller, who calls the pavement under the flyover his home. The clothes line strung across the pavement is not a washing line; it is the closet he shares with his extended family of flower sellers. The fluttering fabric occasionally provides the illusion of privacy; the wooden planks serve as beds at night.

He is willing to do whatever it takes to better himself, but he also knows that it takes more than just grit and determination to break out of poverty. He is pragmatic and determined, but just once in awhile, he needs the narcotic of escapism- a Bollywood movie.