Marketplaces around the world: an archival film

A really interesting film with a narration that reminded me so much of the way the film ‘Citizen Kane’ begins, the same tone, the same excitement! Perhaps, the identity of the american radio broadcasts from the 1940s and ’50s – a time that many of us know about only through the Hollywood films and now also from historical archives that get online like this one!

MARKET PLACES AROUND THE WORLD

www.britishpathe.com

a Street Bazaar & the CITY

The changing nature of the spaces and the displays in a Street bazaar in India makes it a complex phenomenon that differs from formal retail environments. In a Street Bazaar, there are patterns of human interaction and movement that are generated only to disappear again in a little while, to be created once more in another way. This blogpost includes a film about a simple day in a bazaar in the city of Bangalore.



In the Gandhi Bazaar in Bangalore, there have been two to three generations of vendors who have been involved with trading activity. They have developed a symbiotic relationship with the generations of families who have lived in the residential neighbourhood of Basavanagudi and have a sense of belonging to the place as much as the residents do. People come to Gandhi Bazaar to buy vegetables, fruits, flowers, banana leaves, silk sarees, bangles and puja items amongst many other household goods. It is a place to experience the culture of the city.

There is a territoriality in the Indian bazaar where there are single unit territories that individual vendors create at the street level and there are multiple unit territories that clusters of vendors generate at the city level. What is interesting is that this spatially delimited control described by Mattias Karrholm in his paper 'Territoriality in Urban spaces' may imply that the concept of neutrality in a public space may be crucial in urban design in the Indian context. Can an Indian street be enclosed between two parallel lines? Where will the cobbler sit? How to accommodate the roadside shrine or the sugarcane juice stall? So, how do we design our streets?

Read about:
Groundnut Fair at Basavanagudi
an Afternoon in Festive Dussehra
Flower sellers: To create, to forget
Bazaar Tour : Gandhi Bazaar

a Street corner in Mumbai

The corner junction where Shaikh Memon street meets the Lohar Chawl lane in Mumbai is a stage setting for a play that happens here every day of the week. The play is enacted by actors who are street vendors. They walk from one end of the loosely defined and no-shape corner to another and then back again. They sell goods for real. You can buy a plastic tablecloth, a dancing doll, clips for your clothesline or a stuffed toy for your child.

-->

When you first begin to notice the phenomenon, it seems like a play, but then, it isn’t. These are real vendors. The corner is crowded with pedestrians. There is a sea of faces in front of you, if you stand still in one place. In a few moments, the density of faces which almost seem like molecules moving rapidly changes. There are suddenly some empty pockets or voids. The picture is not so blurred anymore. Some people in that crowd are trying to get the attention of other passersby. These are the street vendors who have goods for sale. The voids get filled back again. But, you begin to recognise some faces since they keep coming back into your frame of vision or the stage, if one were to call it that.

You wish the vendors would wear colourful masks so you could spot them more easily. Later, as you view this amazing phenomenon from the upper storey of a nearby building, you realise that they are each carrying their goods in an identical blue bag which hangs from their shoulders with some of the goods being held in different ways either in one hand or both hands. It seems the word ‘person’ derives from the Greek word meaning mask or the role played by an actor in a dramatic performance. Maybe, they ARE wearing a mask. Masks allow one to pretend, don’t they? Here are vendors who are pretending they are just pedestrians, a face no different from the others, no identity revealed. If and when the police approach, the goods move from the hands to a large blue bag and now they are truly pedestrians only.

This is the story of livelihoods and the story of a changing city. The people of Mumbai find entrepreneurial opportunity literally at every corner. Actually, it is not every corner that is found suitable for business. Almost all the streets that are perpendicular to the Crawford market building are high density shopping areas. Some streets are exclusive zones for stationery items, some for textiles, some for light fittings and so on. This brings us to the issue of why this corner and not any other corner down that entire road. There is the Abdul Rehman street corner. This phenomenon did not take root there.

As I talk to one of the shopowners on Shaikh Memon street, I learn that this is the corner with the maximum footfalls. It is the meeting point of the Crawford market entrance, the Lokmanya Tilak road that connects Crawford market to Metro Cinema, the entry point for Lohar chawl (market for electrical & hardware goods) and the Shaikh Memon street that leads to the Jama masjid, to the Mulji Jetha wholesale textile market beyond the mosque and to the Zaveri Bazaar (Mumbai’s gold jewellery market) It is also at this junction that people get off the taxis to enter any of these shopping streets. This corner becomes the crossing of many paths and it is where street vendors can do the most profitable business.

This corner phenomenon is a Clustering of retail that is perhaps not so common. The street entrepreneurs or bazaar entrepreneurs make their choices about locations in unconventional ways. They seem to be very observant of the physical changes within the city, whether it is a widespread inner city core area or a single shopping street. It is not uncommon to find new retail shopping rhythyms merging with existing rhythyms and the gradual dependence of one over the other with the passage of time.

As in many Indian cities, the bazaar is the nucleus of the city. It has been the starting point of the commercial development of the city. Here, in Mumbai, Crawford market has been the central fruit and vegetable market. It has also been selling dryfruits and spices for several decades now. It was also a place where many people, especially the Anglo-Indians came to buy pets. It was a market that catered to western tourists who visited Bombay and to the affluent citizens residing in South Bombay.

Some of the owners of formal shops believe that the street vending brings vibrancy to the area. Without the street vendors, the Shaikh Memon-Lohar Chawl corner would not be as lively and attractive as it is now. The street vendors selling products at cheap prices are a crowd puller. Once people start frequenting these areas for their regular shopping, they also begin to visit the formal shops and the shopowners benefit from the impulse purchases that result.

Some time ago, due to a vigilant Municipal Commissioner, there were raids by the municipality twice a week. This went on for over 15 months. The street hawkers would vacate their places and their goods would often be confiscated. Their business suffered heavy losses. During this period, Shaikh Memon and the other streets here had almost no hawkers.

As per the Government regulations on Street vendors in Mumbai, this street has been declared as a ‘No Hawking zone’ and even today, it is a street where hawking is officially not permitted. However, business goes on as usual for the hawkers. They do pay hafta or an unofficial fee to the police regularly. According to the shopowers, they have a strong lobby and are a vote bank for the local MLAs who permit them to operate here.

With no investments to be made on renting a selling space and no overheads, the street vendors are able to offer the customer a good price on household and other goods and people continue to shop here in large numbers. The shopowner who has been sharing his insights with me has the corner shop that faces the “corner phenomenon”. He has been selling branded ready-to-wear garments, labels such as Scullers and Indigo Nation. This shop has been owned by the same family since 1926. During the pre-independence days, it sold dinner crockery and silverware. Later, it became a shop selling textiles and linen and is now in the readymade garment sector.

With real estate prices in South Mumbai being extremely high, more and more people are opting to find a place of residence in the northern suburbs. Although many of these people work in South Mumbai and commute daily to work, they prefer to return home immediately after work hours on the weekdays and shop at the shopping centers within their own local neighbourhoods. For shops in the Crawford market area, business has dwindled over the years. The owners of formal shops believe that if it were not for the street vending, business would have been even more bleak for them.

The banning of street vending does not seem to bring any tangible benefits to either the public or the shopowners at Shaikh Memon street. The road continues to be a ‘No Parking’ zone at such times. So, if the vendors are not here, it is not as if car parking becomes available and business can improve. If the vendors are here, business only gets better because of the large number of people who visit this street. As in a bazaar anywhere, bargaining in a street bazaar always attracts more customers and becomes the social phenomenon that people add to their shopping cart as they manoeuvre their lives in an evolving metropolis. 

Related posts:
Dadar Flower market
Fish market Mumbai
Bollywood posters

-->

This post is part of the ‘Lonely Planet Blogsherpa Travel Carnival’ on the theme ‘Memorable City Experiences’ which is posted by Denise Pulis at her blog ‘Travel with Denden’

Flower sellers : To create, to forget

The flower sellers sat at the market from morning until the evening. In their demeanour, there was simplicity and there was quietitude. I was awed by the dexterity of their hands and the kindness of their words as they interacted with their customers, while they continued to string flowers. These were flowers that had come into their lives with the crack of dawn, that would soon be offered at the temple and live there until the next day when their place was taken by another showering of flowers and another beautifully crafted garland. 

I remembered these lines from Rabindranath Tagore’s Fireflies :

“April, like a child

writes hieroglyphs on dust with flowers
wipes them away and forgets”

The flower sellers wove in silence one day same as another, even while their creations were born today and gone tomorrow. It had been a silent encounter that I would remember for a long time.

This post is part of the ‘Lonely Planet Blogsherpa Travel Carnival’ which is posted by Camden Luxford at The Brink of Something Else. Do check it out!! The theme is 'Encounters' - those that have been inspiring, memorable or simply bizarre. This is a carnival hosted every two weeks with contributions by Lonely Planet Bloggers from all over the world.