Man Push Cart

My food vendor license and I.D. badge came. I am so legit now. The envelope was square and it didn’t fit in our odd, narrow mailbox very well. I knew right away what was in it, and I tore into the envelope with the excitement of A Christmas Story’s Ralphie when his Little Orphan Annie decoder pin finally arrived in the mail. I wonder if I can use this I.D. to get into bars and stuff.

My husband and I took in our first feature at one of New York’s arty cinaplexes, and of course we saw a film about a mobile food vendor called Man Push Cart. The movingly dingy little movie has nothing to do with sausages, but I was moved to see it because the film’s protagonist, Ahmad, operates a roach coach on some anonymous busy New York City street corner. Even though the bulk of the story takes place out of the cart, that’s not how it feels; the scenes with Ahmad going about his daily pushcart routine are shot in such a claustrophobic tightness that it infiltrates the whole film—boxing him in, as it were.

Ahmad is boxed in in more ways than one. He rises at 2am to arrive at the commissary by 3am, and then he pulls the silvery mass of his cart however many blocks while fighting off the ominous headlights of hulking semi trucks and buses that whoosh past him bullyingly. Then Ahmad sells tea and coffee and bagels, then he pulls the cart back to the commissary, washes it, and makes his way back to his craphole apartment back in Brooklyn—but not before trying to hawk a few bootleg porn DVDs for extra cash.

Cash is Ahmed’s stumbling block. He has none. His wife is dead, he’s estranged from his young son, and the pop idol career he had back in Pakistan is only a shadow of a lost era. Ahmad is simply too emotionally and physically numb to make the push for a better life. He’s only a shell.

It’s not a happy movie, and it won’t be bringing in any new roach coach recruits any time soon. As far as I could tell, Man Push Cart’s depiction of mobile food vending is accurate—especially the scenes in the dismal, cave-like commissary. Luckily, we don’t have to move our cart manually like Ahmad; we have the Dogmatic cart towed. But not every pushcart proprietor can afford that. We also don’t have to carry a propane tank around like a silent sidekick, as Ahmad does. A little cash in hand, I guess, goes a long way to make a potentially miserable job a truly enjoyable one. We are fortunate that way.

Mobile food vending, for most people, is a very hard way of life. My husband and I left the theater, feeling glum after the film’s glum credits rolled. We stepped into the noisy, smoggy streets and the litter hovering above the balmy grates in the sidewalk, and we then vowed not to see any more movies set in gritty New York City in the theater as long as we continue to live here. Movies are for escape, not reality. We get enough of that.