Salad days
KARACHI: “No onions please. Just tomatoes, radish, beetroot, carrots, some cabbage and mint,” a customer, stopping to buy some salad for himself from a small corner shop next to a well-known nihari restaurant in Saddar, says to Abdul Waheed as he prepares a packet for him. That done he also adds a piece or two of lime before handing it to the customer to receive Rs30 in return.
“I sell cool, crunchy colourful salads in plates as well as in packets,” says Waheed as he arranges the freshly shredded and chopped vegetables in a small stainless-steel plate and hands it to a young boy waiting there.
The customers keep coming. Some want just horseradish, some only beetroot. “The portions I make, whatever vegetables they may constitute, are for Rs20 or Rs30 each,” says Waheed. “The little plates are for the restaurants nearby. Their waiters return the empty plates later.”