“I retired from the Tehsil Municipal Administration, Rawalpindi as a gardener after working there for almost 25 years. I set up my stall for fortune telling after I retired. I have four children, two daughters and two sons. I married them all off when I was earning well and had a job. The house that we live in in Dhoke Ratta has been in my family for generations.

I only had my pension to live off after I retired. My sons are both earning but they live in other cities with their families. I started fortune-telling part time and as a way to make some extra money. But I had to pursue it full time because my pension is not going to increase but expenses do.

I had to train a parrot from when it was a chick. A pair of chicks used to cost between Rs2,000 and Rs3,000 but now only one chick costs Rs10,000.

Training them to pick up envelopes from a stack is a hard process. At times, I would set up my stall in a park and earn a good amount, between Rs1,000 and Rs2,000 a day. But after the blast in the Gulshan Iqbal Park in Lahore, the Parks and Horticulture Authority banned our entry into parks, which means I cannot earn as much. The government should let us set up stalls in the park.”

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2017