It’s 10pm. Harish Mukherjee Road is buzzing with the crowd outside the popular Balwant Singh Dhaba. A smartly dressed young man stands out on the opposite side of the road, where he stands with a cart of digestive sweets and candies. His thela has 46 different kinds of churan neatly arranged in glass jars. If asked, he can rattle off all 46 names, and in tune. Not surprising, given that Om Prakash aka Smarty Singh is a churanwala by night and a rapper by day.
Smarty has released 15 songs in the past two years and some of the songs on his YouTube channel have more than 75,000 views.
A rebel in a village
His story starts in a village in Bihar’s Motihari district. Smarty confesses that the desire to follow his heart was strong, and he was rarely interested in school, finding greener pastures elsewhere. “I would tell my parents that I was going to school, but mid-way, I would sneak into the forest and play kanche (marbles). Once school was over, I would blend into the horde of students returning back.”
One thing young Smarty was fond of was television. “There was a black-and-white TV in our neighbouring village, and people from the area would gather to watch Ramayan and Mahabharat.” He smiles thinking about the times he sneaked out after dark through fields, armed with a stick to ward off wild animals, just to watch an hour of television.
Every night, Smarty sets up his cart opposite Balwant Singh Dhaba on Harish Mukherjee Road
Boy in the big city
When he was 15, Smarty left for Delhi. “I called my uncle while standing in front of the Red Fort, asking him to get me some work. He was a churan seller and took me to Batashe Wali Gali (Khari Baoli), getting me everything I needed to start out.” His uncle took him on rounds, teaching him how to speak to customers and make sales, and in a week’s time Smarty seemed ready to step up. “My uncle told me that he was on holiday, and asked me to show him what I could do alone. The very first day, I made a sale of Rs 1,600.”
Seeing the progress, his uncle agreed to hand over the cart to him, and in less than two months Smarty made enough to buy his own cart. At the same time, the Kolkata factory his father worked in shut down, putting his family in a financial crisis. On Smarty’s insistence, his father came to Delhi, where he wanted to join his son as a churan seller. It was disconcerting for the young boy to watch his father walking in the sun. While Smarty has seamlessly been carrying the ‘tough guy’ act all this time, he tears up when he remembers this. Chuckling, he continues, “He gave up in just two days, asking how I kept up with 46 items. To this day, I have 46 items in my cart.”
Smarty has released 15 rap songs in the last two years
There is a special 47th item in Smarty’s churan cart — in a drawer is a notebook and pen where he pens down his songs and poems. “I started writing shayari when I moved to Delhi. My route started at Maharani Bagh at 4pm, and I returned through Hazrat Nizamuddin at 3am. Whatever thoughts I had in the middle of dealing with customers, I would pen them down.”
Delhi is also where he had his first tryst with rap, diving into Honey Singh’s discography with DVDs bought on the streets near Red Fort. Honey Singh, Raftaar, Badshah are his favourite rappers. His habit of walking his cart with headphones on goes back to those days. “It (rap music) gave me a sense of purpose, and the desire to do something.”
Bittersweet love and finding purpose
Armed with this spirit, he put everything into his work, with the added responsibility of providing financial support back home. “Mera jo bhi hua, churan ke thele se hua. Pyaar bhi! (All that I have experienced is connected to my churan cart, including love)” While Smarty is far from the 15-year-old boy who first started moving a cart on the streets of Delhi, a boyish grin appears on his face as he recounts his first love.
An essential part of his song ‘Churanwala’ includes Smarty naming all the 46 items he carries in his cart
He paints the scene like a film. A young 20-something Smarty bought grooming products and would time his route to catch a glimpse of the girl who stayed in the building opposite his slums. After four months of stolen glances, he summoned the courage, walked up to her, hoping that she wouldn’t see his fumbling fingers.
He told her, “Aap bohot sundar ho (You are beautiful).” She replied, “Haan ji, hoon” (Yes, I am), and kept staring. He told her he likes her. As we wait expecting him to build the story to a crescendo, Smarty takes a long pause. Bowing his head, he says, “She said, ‘Tum ho kya? Apni aukat ko dekho.’ (Who are you? Check your place.).” The classism hurt the young Smarty more, he confesses, and that was the first time he had a drink. He threw away the grooming products and left home intent on ending everything but his friend brought him back. “When I woke up the next morning, I laughed over it. Magar us din ke baad maine kabhi nasha nahi kiya. (But I didn’t take any intoxicating substances after that day.),” says Smarty.
In a week’s time the churanwala was focussed on work. He was writing more, putting his heartbreak into his poetry but detached himself from people. One day, a customer told him he was smart and should try modelling. Lost in the din of the day, the thought came back to him at night. “I kept thinking if I was meant for something bigger. That’s when I started replacing shayari with rap.” Embracing the alias of ‘Smarty’, the first rap song he wrote was about the one constant in his life — churan.
Restarting in Kolkata
His father soon set up base in Kolkata again and asked Smarty to join him. After five years in Delhi, he moved to Kolkata in 2019. Upon his arrival, his father showed him around New Market, Fancy Market and Bhawanipore, to choose an area for his cart. He picked New Market and was told to stand with his cart outside Simpark Mall.
Used to moving freely with his cart in fast-paced Delhi, the restriction of having to stay on one road was a shock for Smarty. He was sceptical of Kolkata’s slow reputation and the scope for business here. To his surprise, he made a sale of Rs 6,000 on his first day.
The arrival in Kolkata also made for interesting run-ins for the non-Bengali speaker not familiar with one-way roads. He once saw a huge crowd in a different lane and took his cart there only to be admonished by a cop. “I was scared that I had committed some horrible crime. The cop kept saying, ‘Tum yahan gondogol kiya hai’ (You have created a problem here) and I couldn’t help but laugh at how beautiful the Bengali language is,” recalls Smarty.
The incident, which occurred barely a week after he arrived in Kolkata, kicked-off Smarty’s fascination with the Bengali language, which he has been slowly picking up. Customers are also intrigued with his accent, which helped boost sales. “The ‘hum’ style of Hindi here is very similar to my village. What caught my attention was the passion with which people speak here, and this passion found its way into my writing,” he says. The one thing that has remained constant is the drawer of notebooks, now filled, in his cart. According to Smarty, once he picks up the pen to write a lyric, he isn’t satisfied until he completes it.
Two years in Kolkata and eight rap songs later, the next step came from a customer’s suggestion of an acting course. For three months, Smarty spent every weekend travelling to Barrackpore for an acting course, and says it gave him the confidence to put himself out there. “I also began listening to many local rappers, and felt that I had a unique voice.” A contact led him to a recording studio in Naihati. The first song he recorded was Babu Ghat, an ode to one of his favourite places in the city, which received a great response online and he decided to shoot music videos. In the last two years, he has released 15 songs, with two more in the pipeline.
It takes about 20 minutes to record each song in the studio, which charges about Rs 2,000 per recording. Smarty tries to write and record a song every month, sometimes facing comments on wasting money behind his music. However, the rapper says his motto is clear. “If I earn Rs 2, I will send Rs 1 back to my family, and spend the rest on fulfilling my dream.”
Fulfilling a dream
His zeal even inspired his father to rejoin the churan business. Smarty gave him his old cart, and bought a new one. For the last 18 months, Smarty has been setting up shop every day outside Crazzy Momo in Chakraberia from 7pm, moving to Balwant Singh Dhaba at 10pm. By the time he returns home, it is almost 4 in the morning. He wakes up at 11 and starts writing, sometimes fitting in a recording in the afternoon. After lunch, he pulls in a short workout before grabbing his cart and stepping out again. Some of Smarty’s bestselling churans are the Khatta Meetha Aam Papad and Imli Goli (both Rs 100 for 100g).
“Jab se ye thela mere haath mein hai, usne mujhe kabhi bhookh mehsoos hone nahi di. Jab tak ye mere haath mein hai, mujhe haath nahi failana padega. Mera rap isi se aata hai. (Since I have had this cart, it has never let me go hungry. Until I have this cart, I will never have to ask for help. My rap also comes from this.),” he signs off.
My Kolkata does not condone the use of offensive language in any medium.