There was a kiosk next to where I sat at the food court.

It offered Avil Milk.

The kind of stall that looks inevitable inside a mall: a lit-up counter, an overhead TV running its commercial, where a bearded actor whipped up avil milk and handheld gifts, akin to Kinder Joy's, in a yellow egg for excited kids. The person at the counter had his phone out.

No customers came while I watched. None left either.

I sat there long enough to notice that the stall had a rhythm of its own, a kind of practised stillness, like something holding its breath. Visible in plain sight, with its distinctive yellow branding, standing upright, a glance and its forgotten from your sight, as you make your way.

And I thought: what actually holds this together? What does a person have to believe, or risk, to set something like this up?

What are the costs? What are the targets? What happens to the founder, to the person at the counter, to the kiosk itself?

**Musings**

I kept eating, lazily people-watching. Nothing particular on my mind, just the general drift of a mall afternoon, people moving in and out of frame the way they do when you have nowhere to be for a while.

And somewhere between one bite and the next, I started thinking about how something like this actually works. Because I felt, sitting there, that I was looking at something whose workings I couldn't quite see.

The kiosk had a grand opening when I searched online. It appeared to be full of life

Combing through the photos, something struck me, the people pictured manning the counter weren't there anymore. Probably. I'm not sure if they follow a shift policy.

Reels on Instagram had covered this kiosk, probably as part of promotions. Who knows the backstory of the person making the avil milk, the person serving it, or the story behind the faces featured in the reel?

Somewhere between the launch photos and the promotional reels, I found myself thinking less about the avil milk and more about the people behind it. Perariyathavar.

Who were they? Where had they gone? Were they still here or had they moved on long ago?

It always gets me when employees glance back at the camera as reels cover a new venture.  
This was no exception.

One particular YouTube video I chanced upon showed me forgotten remnants of kiosks that once existed, at the same food court. Did I walk amongst their midst, not knowing they existed once, had stories to tell, but fell apart along the way?

I started reading about how mall kiosks actually work. The numbers are not small. Rent, revenue share, franchise fees, fit-out, security deposits, staff, spoilage. Someone puts in Rs. 8 to 15 lakh before a single cup is sold.

For a kiosk like this to make sense, there are numbers behind it that most of us never see. Rent. Revenue share. Staff. Spoilage. Franchise fees. The counter in front of me looked simple enough, but there was an entire spreadsheet hidden behind the branding.

And yet none of those numbers were visible from where I sat. All I could see was a yellow counter, a phone face-up, and an afternoon moving slowly around it.

I don't know which side of that this kiosk is on. I was just a person eating his food.

It was probably money that gave hope to a family to earn bread, at the end of the day. Something that lent fuel to potential that someone saw. Maybe it still is.

The person at the counter, whoever he is, is part of something whose outcome I can't read from where I'm sitting.

Maybe he has been here since the kiosk opened. 

Maybe he joined last month. Maybe he'll still be here the next time I visit.

It struck me how little of that story is visible from the customer side. The person behind the counter is often the most visible part of the business, yet the easiest to overlook.

If things don't work out, he would walk away with a week's notice, if that. No provident fund. No gratuity. Just the next counter job somewhere else in the city, carrying nothing of what went wrong here.

**Before I Left**

I finished my food. The kiosk was still there when I left. The person had put his phone face-down.

I don't know if I'll see the same stall the next time I visit. Maybe something else will be there, another instant food venture. The mall will have moved on. It always does.

No memorial for the stall that once stood here, that wanted a chance at making something big. People would probably lament its departure in hushed discussions, or maybe on a Reddit thread somewhere.

But its success is where it would leave an imprint on customers' minds.

Maybe I'll see the same yellow counter, a little busier, someone actually in line. I don't know.

It was one of those things you notice when you have nowhere to be and a store is just sitting in front of you, not quite failing, not quite holding on. Just present.

I don't know what he was thinking. But I think I understand a little better what it cost someone to put him there.

Musings: Perariyathavar