ABSTRACT
A high-caste customer of Muli’s prostitutes helps him to start a betel selling business (betel is for chewing) and secures for him a permanent spot in the city market. Muli becomes the first and only untouchable of his village to hold a permanent spot in the market. His earnings improve. Gone are the days of starvation, of toiling in the stone quarries, of desperately seeking work where none is available. Muli has a steady income, and he buys sweets and clothes for himself, his wife, and his son.
Muli presents a revealing account of the ways in which his negative self-image as a Bauri inhibits his seizing new business opportunities. He fears that high-caste people will refuse to buy from him, and that he knows neither how to start nor run a business. A high-caste businessman prods him, gives him his start, and instructs him in business practices. Even so, Muli’s wife warns him not to try business. “We are sons of laborers,” she says, “that is better for us.” Throughout Muli’s life history she consistently prefers a lower, steady-income job to a new venture with an unpredictable outcome.
