``Chachi, please finish off these onions today itself or they will go rotten by tomorrow,'' hawker Dinesh Parmar informs his elderly customer in the slums of Dharavi.

Vendors say these low grade onions have a high water content, and are highly perishable, which is why they are cheap. Mottled black, decaying and a little over an inch in diameter, the onions in this bargain basement sale are a far cry from the normal onions.

``They won't even bring tears to your eyes,'' grins Parmar.

Yet, they are sliding off the handcarts like hotcakes. Onion prices may have rocketed to an all-time high of Rs 50 a kg, but on the roadside, a gaggle of lower middle-class housewives, elderly persons and children is engaged in picking out the best from the worst. Just like in`normal' times.

Hand-cart vendor Ali Akbar ferries to the Vashi wholesale market at the crack of dawn to buy these low grade onions at Rs eight per kg and then hawks them between Rs 15 and 16 per kg in Sewri. He usually buys around 50 kg onions from Vashi and, turning the sweltering October heat to his advantage, dries the precious little bio-bulbs on the streets.

There are at least a dozen such sellers in this dockyard area who do brisk business, at a time when the onion prices are on an unrelenting upward climb. ``The high prices have come as a boon to us,'' Parmar chuckles. The hawkers make a profit margin of nearly 40 to 50 per cent. Another trader from Sewri, Bishwanth Paswan, sells the onions at a `reasonable' price of Rs 24 per kg, claiming that these are slightly better that the low grade onions. However, a strong rumour going on in the locality is that the recent consignment of onions from Dubai, which had started rotting, are being recycled by the small-time traders.

Commented vegetable sellerRam Babu from Dharavi, ``The Dubai consignment is extremely rotten, and what stinks more is that these are the same onions which had been exported from India. The rains this year have really wrecked our onions.'' There are two reasons behind the poor quality of onions, say market watchers. The onions get damaged by unseasonal rains, and the bulb size remains stunted and doesn't increase. Secondly, the onion is a crop that is prematurely harvested by farmers for making a fast buck.

``Farmers in the state are sending onions to the market even before they have matured to take advantage of the situation. That is why certain onions are cheaply sold,'' explains Vijay Kumar Dalvi, president of the Dadar Vegetable and Flowers Association.

Big onion traders feel cheated by the pronouncements of different state governments on import of onions, saying they will only serve to further push up the international prices of onions. ``Prices of Iranian onions have already soared from 250 to 275 dollars,'' pointed outKishore Bhanushali of SM Traders.