Hotel for Poor and Hungry

Walking near Teen Darwaza in Ahmedabad you may witness the rare occasions where Indians make and respect queues. Lines of people, males females children, different religions and ages, sitting down, waiting for their turns. I was here because my father had missed three of his roza for the month of Ramadhan: one of the less frequent reasons you may be required to give away a part of your property, liquid or illiquid. More often it is the compulsory Zakat.

Zakat is one of the pillars of Islamic life. It is a duty to Allah that obligates every wealthy individual to share with the needy a portion from his/her wealth. It is a very important institution for the individuals as well as the society in general.

http://www.baitulmaal.org/us/donate/about-zakat#Q2

The word 'wealthy' in the ab0ve definition has a very low bar. The affect is that there is a culture of gifting money, clothes, feeding people, and such like in the culture I grew up around (not strictly 'in'). 


A few enterprising people in Ahmedabad have turned this doing good into a business opportunity. Growing up in Ahmedabad I saw these 'hotels', (in Ahmedabad a hotel is a place for eating out) go from being a place for a cheap non-veg food place to full time hotel for the poor. You can feed someone a whole (unlimited) meal for Rs 20 or a fixed meal for Rs 10. 


Anonymity is a prime concern in making such gifts, and these hotels present a good way to quickly move in, pay the cash, and leave. I am not sure if the people who line-up to eat at these places will strictly meet the definitions of 'needy', and investigation about these kind of things before giving zakat is as important as giving the zakat. But if someone is willing to be considered a beggar they are needy enough for me. Loss of hope, self respect is as serious as loss of a limb. I should know.


It is indeed a good business. Making a living while doing good work, god's work, work deemed great across religions and cultures. And all this while you have more customers. I have often eaten at these places (as a self financed customer). The food is not bad at all. Of course its being non-vegetarian restricts who it caters to, but I feel that hungry and destitute may not refuse a hot fresh meal.


The fact that even in the present difficult global financial circumstances, the business thrives and customers have low waiting time, says something about the people of Ahmedabad. 



A related newspaper article with a picture (2009):
http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/index.aspx?Page=article&sectname=News%20-%20City&sectid=3&contentid=200903282009032802283964463306406
It should be noted that prices have doubled since 2009, in line with many food items. 

P.S: I tried to interview some of the hotel owners, but they were hesitant in being interviewed or talk about their business. Possible reasons can range from tax to my dubious apparent religious affiliation, Gujarati Muslims still feel insecure. Total personal failure at reassuring my subjects is the prime suspect. 

Khan Saab Ki Shifa Medical

Dust. There was no dust in Shabbir's 8 month old medical store. That is the second thing I noticed when I was at his place day before yesterday. The first thing was the beautiful green Styrofoam structure in front of his shop.

He was not there when I reached "Khan saab ki Shifa Medical." I went into the shop and looked around. Everything in the store was neatly piled, alphabetically organised and clean. Then I noticed the tall backed swiveling chair which looked very much the kind that my father had in his veterinary dispensary.

In 1991. My father had just opened his dispensary and was looking for an all purpose handy man. A boy of the age 15 or so turned out to be the man. My father noticed him when he used to deliver tea to the dispensary guests and my father. Shabbir had a way with words and charmed and made friends easily. He used to go to school then, I think, or he had just dropped out of class 7, but he could read Gujarati and enough English and Hindi for my father's work. My father offered him a salary higher that the tea-stall. Apart from general cleanliness and helping my father in operations, Shabbir was responsible for prescriptions and maintaining a stock of medicines. That was the first step in Shabbir's pharmaceutical career.

My father had an eye for cleanliness and taught Shabbir to keep the office sparkling clean. Including my father's glass covered table and the long backed swivelling green chair. When my father was not around and we (sister and I) were, all of us (Shabbir, sister and I) would take turns for swivelling on that chair.

My father's sense for office cleanliness was not matched by his business acumen. Before we left Jungadh the drug trading agency next door, Pharmachem, purchased my father's dispensary . They also decided to take over the human resources: Shabbir was hired as an office boy. But the trader soon realised Shabbir's potential and promoted him to a salesman. For 17 years since then, he was responsible for managing the sales all around Saurashtra. Two years ago he got married and rented himself a new room in the same chawl as his father. He had plans to change his life after marriage.

While he was a traveling salesman all these seventeen years, his sight was set higher. He saved a lot spent his money very stingily, eating only once a day on tours, and denying himself the simple comforts he could afford. He also worked many hours in the shop of a friend in another city, to learn the business. Around the time his daughter was born, he rented his own shop space with his savings and registered it as a drug store. Second-hand furniture had to be found, repaired and beautified to his taste while he worked his 12 hour shifts at Pharmachem. The work also kept him out of Jungadh for 3 days a week, so everything was going slow, but he persisted, working bit by bit. When his daughter was 8 months old, he had the whole set-up and was ready to quit the sales job.

"When I started this shop there were no doctors here. All the neighbouring shopkeepers told me there is no way a medical store would run in this low income area. But by the grace of Allah, now there are four doctors in the neighbourhood: three allopathic and one barber", he holds a hand forward for a clap.

Many people come to him with a prescription other come with a box of a hair colour as a sample of what they want. He has 'arrangements' with all the doctors (and the barber): they tell him what medicines they will prescribe and he stocks these. "The branded drugs and cosmetics I keep for service. The biggest margin is in generic. This one I buy for 70 paisa each and sell for 2 rupees. You are good at math do the margin." He sells his medicine by daily doses one or two pills at a time, which fits the pockets of the daily wage workers, auto drivers and small shopkeepers who are his customers. He has a simple and effective system of small tags which he staples on the medicine as reminder: time of the day and before or after food.

He takes care of his customer's needs. Sometimes he will open his shop at midnight on a phone call. "I sell anything that other shopkeepers around here don't. There is no margin in branded products such as hair colour. But I keep it so that people come to my store, once they visit my store they become friend even girls and women: they will never think of buying anything I sell from anywhere else."

He is amazingly gender neutral when it comes to selling his products. He shows respect to women and he charms them! A group of five young women were surrounding the counter and a few spilled inside the store. This was his free education session, "creating customers" as he puts it. He was explaining what the different bottles on the cosmetic cupboard are for, many of them had pictures of women on them and he was explaining, "This one is for hair, it makes your hair shiny. You don't need this, your hair is so nice anyway, but your friend here may want hair like yours." A discussion about the alleged nice-hair-girls' hair ensues. "That over there is for making your breasts fuller," all the girls giggle on cue, "your chances of getting married increase," he says with a hush tone and a conspiratorial wink which is met with another large uproar of giggles.

"The largest selling product here is Viagra," he tells me. "It's all hush hush, but the margin is very high. People buy Viagra on weekends, everyone wants to have fun." What about condom sales, they must be very high too then, I wonder aloud. "What condoms? Very low! Apne miyan bhai kahan manne wale hai?" (Our Muslim brothers are never going to understand.) 

"I make enough to run my store and home. I save in the post office. That is how I bought this shop. I have insurance policies in wife's name and mine. It will become Rs. Y each in 10 years. What is the value of Rs.Y which will come to me in 10 years? But it helps us save," he hits me with his intuitive understanding of time value of money. I explained how he can find that value using an approximate interest figure and his desk calculator. He asked me other questions about taxation and bank loans for housing (which I was not able to answer). "Before my daughter starts going to school, I want to have a house of my own Chintu Bhai, that is the next thing!" he says swiveling like a boy in his tall back swiveling chair.

see also: 2012-01-15