He is a frequent visitor to the residential areas of cities and towns of India, seen with his small machine hooked on his shoulder, walking the length and breadth of the Indian roads. He parks himself in a convenient place for people to notice him and starts his machine running his knife along the razor sharp edges of the circular blade. The piercing metallic sound is a call to people in the neighbourhood that the ‘sharpener of knives’ is here.
I was surprised to see him this morning in our secluded and quiet colony nestled on the top of a hill. He was there just outside the gate, waiting for a householder to see him and request his services. When I asked him how he managed to walk all the way up the hill with his heavy machine, he said with a very grave, unsmiling face, “Paise keliye karna padta hai” (I have to do it to earn money), in broken Hindi. His reticent disposition did not put me off and I bombarded him with my curious questions about his life and work. A few more minutes and I learned that he hailed from Andhra Pradesh and was here in Goa for a few months every year. When he came to know that I spoke Telugu too, his face broke into a smile, and he looked suddenly relaxed as I continued to chat with him.
A middle-class Indian is usually very thrifty and hesitates to discard anything without considering its value. Knives, scissors, other domestic tools are all reused as long as they can be utilized in some way. Kitchen knives and scissors that become blunt after many years of use are stored away for the day when a knife sharpener man visits their locality. It is a common sight in India, people bringing out a bunch of blunt, rusted knives of different sizes and shapes, and getting them sharpened again. There is a joy in being able to reuse an instrument or a tool without unnecessarily spending a couple of hundreds on it.
Rangayya comes to Goa every year in the months of February-March just before ‘Gudi Padwa’, new year celebrated by Goan Hindus. He stays on till August-September and leaves back to his village Mārkapuram, Andhra Pradesh after ‘Ganesh Chaturthi’ (the Hindu festival worshipping Lord Ganesha, the elephant God). He comes here leaving his family behind in his village and goes around Panjim, Merces, Ribandar and sometimes as far as Calangute, Baga, Siolim etc in North Goa for work. He travels by the local buses, sometimes requesting the bus driver to keep his machine on top of the bus if the bus is too crowded. Rangayya claims that he makes enough money sharpening knives all day. He charges anywhere between 30-50 rupees depending on the size of the knives and their condition.
He seems be happy living the life of a nomad for a few months every year. Back in his village, he finds work on the fields as a field hand or does miscellaneous jobs around the village.
My neighbour came out just then with a bunch of blunt knives and an adoli (a traditional Goan vegetable cutter and coconut scraper). A few minutes of haggling, they settled for an amount that they both were contented with and he started his work. With the piercing metallic sound deterring us from making any more conversation, I looked on quietly, watching him sharpen each knife with dexterity.