Entry 10 - This Little Veggie Went to Market

   This little veggie  went to market: At the Devaraja Market in Mysore   
 

As Canada shifts more fully into summer weather, I am sure there are people in southern Ontario giving voice to that old complaint, it’s not so much the heat as it is the humidity.  We are learning to adjust to both heat and humidity here in Mysore, and with the occasional monsoon rain sweeping through, temperatures are somewhat moderate at about thirty degrees most days, with reasonable humidity and often a gentle breeze to keep things comfortable.  But in a misuse of the phrase about the weather, I might suggest that in my experience with India, it is not so much the volume of people, as their constant movement.

Coming from small-town Sackville, where it seems like everybody knows my name, and where there is space to walk, and stop, and engage in conversation on the streetcorner with someone who knows my name, Mysore, of course, is radically different.  In square miles, it is a little less than the city of Moncton, but contains more than ten times the population.  While I have travelled and lived in cities including Hamilton, Ontario, and overseas in Manchester, and Nishinomiya, Japan, I have not experienced the same density of people, and certainly not the movement of people as it is here.  Here, the pedestrian traffic is like the vehicular traffic; it doesn’t so much flow as it surges.  There is an inherent life force at work, and I have not yet internalized the rhythm of pedestrian life and find myself battling against a crowd, or being surged along in directions I have not yet decided I want to go.

However, at the main intersection of two busy roads, I have finally learned how to cross the street;  in Mysore there are no crosswalks outside the downtown area, there are no traffic signals, and there are seemingly no traffic rules.  Crossing the street is an act of faith. There is no point in waiting, because the traffic never ceases to surge by.  So, often with a deep breath, one just has to commit and step forward slowly and intentionally, and cross the road; this, with the faith that the vehicles will stop, or more likely just weave around you as you walk, a taxi passing behind in the spot you have just left and a motorcycle passing in front so close that you can touch the handlebars if you wish, All this is accomplished with much honking, not so much to tell you to get out of the way as a reminder a vehicle is there, sharing the road (yes, you want to shout, I can see you – in fact, I could touch you if I chose to!).  And you just keep moving, slowly and steadily, without moving too quickly or stopping suddenly.  In faith, you get to the other side, perhaps with other pedestrians, while all the vehicles continue in that strange dance of the streets, surging and weaving constantly without ever really stopping.  Traffic here just moves, only occasionally acknowledging that there are rules to the road.  One man here, who comes to North America occasionally, tells me that in Canada he has to wait a few days before attempting to drive; I asked if this was to get used to driving on the right side of the road instead of the left, and he replied, “no, to remember that I have to obey the rules.  For instance, when I come to a stop sign in Canada, I have to remember that I am actually supposed to stop.”
So with this in mind, we headed downtown on the bus last week, disembarking at the main bus station.  And again, there is little point in trying to stop to get one’s bearings, as the crowd simply surges you out of the open air terminal and onto the street, where you hope you are moving in the right direction.   Working our through a massive, surging sea of humanity, we actually managed to cross the road and get to the Devaraja Market, the central market area for the city.  We plunged into the market, with its own narrow lanes and alleys and aisles all established on uneven smooth paving stones and cobblestones that may be original to the early days of the market.  Space is tight, and the air is redolent with a thousand smells.  People are moving, buying, inspecting, looking, carrying bags and leading children, while vendors calling out their deals in Kannada, and Hindi, and English, and some are roaming the aisles trying to persuade consumers to come to their stall on the other side.  And in this mass confusion of thousands of people in tight spaces, where light is dim, I am trying to keep track of nine other people.

The market itself is cramped and old, dating back to the reign of the Moslem ruler Tipu Sultan in the late eighteenth century.  In the market, one can see Moslem vendors, especially at the vegetable stands, their clothing and headgear separating them out from the Hindu vendors.  There are vegetables, on stands, on the ground, arranged fantastically, or just spread out; there are fruits stacked high, with mangoes, bananas, oranges, pineapples, jackfruit, papayas, melons and more.  There is a flower aisle, where you can buy a garland for yourself or the dashboard of your vehicle, or to hang from the roof of the truck over the windshield; there are garlands to wear or put in your hair, or to place put in your home shrine to Vishnu or Shiva or Ganesh.  There are jewellery stands, with more bangles than I knew existed, in more colours than I have seen in one place.  You can get plastic and steel pots in the traditional Indian shape, or the very traditional clay version.  Cutlery, factory made and rough made and carved from wood, is available.  Garden implements, including the Indian curved garden knife, can be bought.  And there are beads – thousands of beads.  Bargaining skills are useful, and starting to walk to another stall to get the same good or product can bring the price down quickly.

After a couple of hours of the market, I was almost overwhelmed with people, and smells, and movement.  It was off to the Karnata government Gift Emporium, a pleasant contrast to the high activity level and volume of people at the market.  We wandered in the expansive and open area of the Gift Emporium, and made a few small purchase.  The orderliness of the operation in making a purchase made  me think of a very old British system; the store itself probably dated from British colonial days, and had a gentle air of late Victorian imperialism about it.  There were sections in the long, narrow store, each selling a different kind of item (sandalwood in one section, teak in another, silk scarves here and stone carvings there), and an item from that section had to be delivered to a clerk at a desk by those goods (and not to the wrong desk!).  To effect a purchase, the clerk at the designated desk would carefully note the prices, and write by hand a sales slip, in triplicate, using carbon paper (I can’t remember the last time I actually saw someone use carbon paper).  Once the purchase had been written up and the price calculated, the customer is presented with the two carbon copies, while the original is carried to the front of the store by another store employee, along with the item or items being purchased.  Thus, with the exception of my carbon copies, my hands were free to continue shopping.  Four or five times I went through this transaction process until it was time to pay up and leave.  I headed to the front of the store and headed to the payment area; I realized I needed to choose the cash or credit card option, but was unsure of my total.  The clerks at each desk would not tell me my total until I had made my payment choice, so after a quick mental tally of amounts I opted to pay cash.  The clerk there dutifully took my receipts, stamped one copy of each for his records, and then with a different stamp, proceeded to stamp my copies.  Money was passed and change received, and I took my receipts and went to the receiving area.  No longer sure what I had actually purchased, I handed over my last receipts, and received a number of small bags, each containing a purchase and each with an original receipt stapled to it.  Somehow very civilized, very genteel, but I could not also help thinking, very inefficient.               
 

After a long afternoon of crowds, and movement, it was time to head home.  Back to the bus station, and soon our bus arrived.  We got on, and people surged on behind us.  I have never been in a bus so crowded in all my life, not even in Japan.  There is no sense of personal space, conversations continued across the bus at high volume, and somehow the conductor managed to move from front to back and then to the front again.  After only a few blocks, the bus stopped, and somehow, more people got on, and then in an act that defies physics, the conductor made his way through again, somehow identifying those who needed tickets. After two more stops like that, I thought there would not be enough air left in the bus for people to breathe, even with the windows open, until finally we reached our stop.  It was with great merriment that the conductor roared out “make way”, a call that was picked up by various passengers at the back, and the crowd somehow managed to part to allow the students at the back of the bus to make their way to the door, and off.    Another day, another experience.  I feel that I should never again complain about crowds in the mall at Christmas time.  Never.