Hawkers distract passers-by at Basantapur

By A Staff Reporter Kathmandu, July 16: “Dear brother, please buy this postcard!” a boy comes screaming toward a guy trying to talk on his phone.

“Nani (Dear maiden), won’t you buy this bottle of water? God will bless you, my child!” an old woman ambushes two young ladies leaving the Dairy Development Corporation (DDC) outlet.

A group of children, none older than 10 or 11, swarms foreigners. “Photo  Rs. 5. No, Rs. 10. Take card … photo. Please, dollar, please,” they speak over each other in a barely intelligible manner.

Anyone who goes to Kathmandu’s Hanumandhoka Durbar Square (Basantapur) on any day of the week will be familiar with this scene; of hawkers lying in wait to pounce upon the unsuspecting bystander, to waylay the worriless stroller and leave them a few rupees poorer than when they found them.

“It’s an emotional blackmail,” whined Rajiv Ojha, who had just bought a bottle of mineral water he did not need for Rs. 40 which is almost twice the market price, when The Rising Nepal caught up with him in front of the police station at Hanumandhoka on Friday. 

“An old lady walks up to you and asks you to help her out by buying a bottle of water. She takes the name of her children and grandchildren and starts blessing you. It gets overwhelming,” he said.

It is a similar case with children who ask for money to eat. “How heartless would one be if they denied money to hungry kids,” said Samjhana Dongol who visits Basantapur often with friends and gives money to youngsters if she has cash with her.

But her charity is driven in equal parts by irritation as it is by compassion, as the kids, especially the boys, hassle girls and women and surround them until they capitulate. “They pull at your clothes, they shout, they block your way; it gets scary at times,” she said.

The kids are equally unruly to couples. Aadi, an 11-year-old boy who sells postcards to whoever he can find in the Hanumandhoka area, said that romantic duos were an easy “target.” 

The boy, who refused to give a last name or details about his family, said with a big sly smile on his face, “Couples do not like to be disturbed. So they buy whatever we sell to get rid of us.” He proclaimed with an uncomfortable amount of pride, “We hassle them, tease them, bother them, whatever we have to do to make a sale.”

While acknowledging that hawking – the act of carrying about and selling goods, typically by shouting – may be a source of livelihood for some, Roshan Man Shakya, head of the Hanumandhoka Durbar Square Conservation Programme, said that such acts, the way they are done by the children and senior citizens, can trouble national and international tourists and need to be controlled.

For this, Shakya informed that the Programme was working with concerned authorities to discourage such disorderly sales behaviour. 

“We coordinate with organisations working in the interests of children and elderly individuals, collaborate with the police and also mobilise Kathmandu Metropolitan City’s City Police.”

Admittedly, these moves seem to have brought down the number of hawkers at the UNESCO World Heritage Site but more still needs to be done, he admitted.