India, March 4 -- It demands guts plus optimism - as well as some fortitude to withstand setbacks - for an otherwise homebound person to come up with such a simple but daring enterprise. Which is: to cook a dish at home, and then walk out of the house into the big wide world with the dish, set it on a table by the footpath, and then wait for strangers to shell out their hard-earned cash for that dish.
This is what Shweta is doing this weekend afternoon. She is selling the rajma chawal that she had cooked at her home in Pratap Nagar. The young woman has set up the stall beside the entry to the crowded Sunday Book Bazar at Mahila Haat on Asaf Ali Road. Not a seasoned businesswoman, this is Shweta's second time as an entrepreneur on this loca...