Rita Pandey has been selling panipuri in Patan for the past three years. The recent ban on streetfood sale in response to the cholera outbreak has put her in a fix.  

She has no business right now and she doesn’t know how long the ban will stay. 

When I met her on a recent afternoon, she was sitting on a pavement talking to a group of people. Her cart was nowhere to be seen. Pandey is 24 but she looks old for her age, deep frown lines run across her head and just looking at her face, one can say she worries a lot. 

She has been living alone with her daughter after her husband left   to work in Kuwait in 2019. Pandey started selling panipuri two years ago in order to pay the rent and send her daughter to school.“I don’t know how long this ban will last. My livelihood depended on selling panipuri. Without business, it is getting difficult to survive,” she says.

Although her husband sends money, it hardly covers the cost of living in the city. Every month, Pandey pays Rs 7,000 for rent and another Rs 4,500 for her daughter’s school fees. “On good days, I make a profit of Rs 1,500 a day,” she says.Pandey was born and raised in Arghakhanchi 

district and came to Lalitpur for the first time after her marriage in 2017. She was just 19 at the time and didn’t know anything about city life, how unforgiving it could be if you have no source of income.

Panday’s husband was planning to go abroad at the time. While he frequented one manpower agency after another, she stayed at home. “My husband got a job in Kuwait and left in 2019. Our daughter hadn’t been born yet; I didn’t even know I was pregnant at the time,” Pandey says.

She got through the pregnancy alone and gave birth to a baby girl. This was during the initial days of Covid-19 pandemic. Life was getting increasingly hard for Pandey, a new mother. That was when she decided to start a panipuri business. 

“My daughter was just seven-month old when I started this business, but soon Covid-19 hit Nepal and I couldn’t put up my stall for several months,” she says. When the country went under a lockdown, Pandey didn’t know what to do. She had already made the investment and backing down was not an option. 

Once the lockdown was lifted, she set up her business on the roadside of Patan. In the initial days, Pandey says she didn’t earn much. “I spend around Rs 2,000 daily and some days I couldn’t even break even, but I pressed on,” she says.

Her business really took off last summer. More people started visiting her cart and she has made many regular customers. “I was making good progress until Lalitpur Metropolitan City imposed this ban,” Pandey says. “I didn’t even know about the ban until a random person told me about it.”

Asked if she has thought of an alternative should this ban were to last for months, she says selling panipuri is all she knows and is good at.  “I am comfortable doing this business. I don’t know if I’ll be able to shift to something else,” adds. If the ban is not lifted or continues for a long time, Pandey says she will have to think about getting a proper shop space. “I don’t even know how much that is going to cost me. But mostly, I’m worried about losing my customers.”