‘Sold vegetables outside my son’s school after friends ignored my calls’, recalls teary-eyed Rajesh Kumar: ‘Wanted to show it was not a menial job’

At the height of his playing career, Rajesh Kumar—who gained notoriety for his famous parts in Sarabhai vs. Sarabhai, Yam Kisi Se Kam Nahi, Neeli Chhatri Waale, and Yeh Meri Family—made the unexpected decision to give up performing. Seeking answers to the question, "What am I doing for the next generation?," he made the decision to give up the limelight and focus on farming in 2017. But this choice turned out to be harder than he had thought.

Rajesh recently spoke with Siddharth Kannan how he came up with the idea of being a "family farmer." He called a number of his buddies with this start-up concept. "A few of them subscribed to it, while the rest chose to ignore it," he stated. I can think of a lengthy list of people who initially thought my proposal was fantastic but subsequently chose to ignore me. They were the individuals I had appeared on screen beside. The actor then related his experience peddling veggies in front of his son's school.




Rajesh revealed, "After the start-up failed, I started to sell vegetables outside my son's school," with tears welling up in his eyes. People began to wonder if he had gone insane. How come he's selling veggies? That is to say, my son went to his teachers and asked, "Would you please buy vegetables from my dad?" when he spotted me selling vegetables outside his school. At the time, he was in third grade. After that, every student in his class went to a separate classroom to let the teachers know that I was selling veggies and asked them to buy them from me.

"My purpose to sell vegetables outside my son's school was to show I wasn't doing a menial job," an emotional Rajesh Kumar stated. My intention was to get kids to realize how amazing the work is. Not to benefit farmers, but to educate customers was my goal. They frequently ask for free coriander leaves, ignoring the labor-intensive process that goes into growing them.




Rajesh spent five years doing this and accumulated debt of almost Rs 2 crore. "My math was not strong," he remarked. I had no idea I was losing between Rs 22 and Rs 25 per kg. There was also a great deal of waste. I had already lost between Rs 12 and Rs 15 lakh by this point. It was on top of the approximately Rs 1 crore in debt I already owed. At this point, because everything was going awry over WhatsApp, I considered developing an app to manage the orders and transactions. However, the developer who designed the app deceived me when it was finished. In the three months that the software was available, I had a significant financial loss.

"I had to respond to my family and friends who made investments in the company. The farmers who worked with me on the business had questions for me. Everything had gotten too much for him. I will have to find a way, I told myself at this point. Rajesh said, "If not, I will die with a debt of about Rs 2 crore."