“What will I do, sitting at home?”

“Kaku, andi? (Aunty, eggs?)” This is my weekly refrain to Surekha Kochrekar, a vegetable-seller at my local market in Banda, the last town in Maharashtra as you cross into Goa.

She wears thick glasses, her sarees splayed with bright patterns. Like most of the women vendors in the market, her toenails are turning rust-red, taking on the colour of the Konkani soil they spend much of their time in.

“Why are you getting so skinny?” she asks. “Because you aren’t giving me any eggs,” I respond. Her big laugh comes easy.

Kochrekar kaku rents the small tin shop where she sells local vegetables; they sprout shades of green against a bright blue wooden shelf and tarp they are laid out on—long beans and okra, gourds bitter and ridged, cucumbers and chillies, plantains. Sometimes there is breadfruit, smooth eggplant, radish, and pumpkin greens.

And country eggs that dreams are made of—the yolks sitting high, perfectly round in their whites, shining true yellow.

Across the street, the wholesale kirana shop sells white, broiler eggs stacked high on the counter. They are larger, priced at less than half of what kaku offers, which cost ₹12 per little brown egg you could easily close your fist over.

Kaku moved to Banda from the nearby village of Redi over 4 decades ago, right after she got married. She and her husband farmed until he passed away a few years ago. It was only then that she began coming to the market, because, “What will I do, sitting at home?”

Every morning, barring Tuesdays, she comes to the square at 7.30 to set up her stall. Mondays—weekly market days in Banda—are full of hustle-bustle.

The owner of kaku’s stall, Sheikh, rears the heirloom chickens whose eggs she stores carefully in a beaten-up plastic dabba. The bottom is layered with sand to prevent spoilage, she says

At times, she takes the eggs home to her two grandsons in the fifth and first grade. For them, she boils the eggs, or makes omelettes to roll into chapatis.

Kaku doesn’t eat eggs and doesn’t know what she is missing out on, though I tell her that often. She smiles, then places them gently into my carton.”