For Maniamma Nadar (40), a resident of slums near Ambernath railway station, the day begins before the crack of dawn as she catches the first train along with her friends from Ambernath to Kalyan. Once there, she heads straight for Laxmi Market, a wholesale outlet for retail vendors from Vikhroli to Badlapur. Then, she begins to scavenge for discarded vegetables.

``With most stall-owners simply throwing their spoilt vegetables on the ground, it is easy for us,'' she explains, pointing to the sizeable collection of assorted vegetables knotted in her pallu. When the improvised pouch is stuffed to capacity, Maniamma scurries to a vendor who has set up shop on the road connecting thestation to Mohammed Ali Chowk. Here she empties her pallu and promptly sticks her hand out for her money. Maniamma is mighty pleased with her ingenuity.

Hundreds of shops line the road outside the parcel office near the station. A helper there is busy sorting onions depending on the size and quality. And lo, you have plenty of vegetables ready for sale at less than half the price they fetch inside the market!

After unloading her booty, Maniamma is back at the market for more. But what if she does not get enough to satisfy her `clients'? ``Like other scavengers, I then depend on the dustbin outside or the nullah,'' she remarks. And how much does she scrape together every day? ``Oh, about Rs 100," she says, patting her bulging pallu.

But the going is not always easy and the competition gets pretty rough at times. With each scavenger zealously guarding their territory, fisticuffs are not unusual, especially among the men.

Anant Jadhav (40), who resides in Dombivli, is an expert at the trade. He's beenpoking around dustbins for vegetables to hawk for two decades at least. But unlike most others, Jadhav belongs to the small breed of scavengers who do not sell their scraps to vendors. He retails them himself. Bigger profits, you see.

Leaning against his handcart, where his wife has neatly arranged the vegetables ``to make them presentable'', he grins: ``The going has never been as good as it is this year. Earlier, we would sell our stuff only in the slums. Now we frequent the posh housing societies as well.'' And, it appears, Jadhav and his ilk are masters at deception, for none of the housewives Express Newsline spoke to in Dombivli and Kalyan suspected that their kandas and batatas were recycled from the rubbish bin.

``True they don't last and rot in a day. But the vendor told me this was so because they were from the new stock, which is the wet variety,'' says Vrinda Rane from Tilak Nagar, squinting suspiciously at a plate of bhajias on the settee.

Bindu Nair, who lives at Rambaug, Kalyan, inspectsthe array of vegetables at Laxmi Market extra-carefully. ``I pick up all my vegetables here except onions and potatoes, which I buy from the vendor coming to the house.'' Now she understands why greens at the market are exorbitant in comparison.

With a sizeable section of consumers unwittingly buying recycled vegetables, naturally vendors inside the market are resentful. Says Babubhai Perach, a wholesaler hawking onions and potatoes: ``The price difference is one of the main factors which determines where the consumer will go. Given the prices of `recycled' vegetables, no wonder people prefer to be served at their doorstep.''