Grand Central Terminal market

There are times when you have thoughts that run through your mind one after another from a different place and a different time – thoughts of walking through a market in a New York train station, of a story called ‘Hugo’ unfolding inside a Paris railway station and of memories emanating from the Victoria Terminus in Mumbai.

You look at these thoughts as they pass by like you were looking at a roll of film unfold before you. These are negatives that are placed side by side in your mind but are geographically located in different continents. Something binds them – they all hold within them histories of the railroad and of the time when the making of a “place” came about from detailing a ceiling, a grand clock or a monumental turret in a way that generations later, we still wonder about how time could stand still then as it never does now to make such inspiring work possible.

The experience of the Grand Central Terminal in New York city and the market within it are heightened in my mind with the imagery of Martin Scorcese’s 2011 film ‘Hugo’ particularly the opening scenes of the little boy looking through the hands of the station clock and the story’s simultaneous perception of ingenuity in the making of clocks and in the making of films with the railroad station as its backdrop.
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I really liked the way Tony Hiss describes the Grand Central Terminal in his book The Experience of Place - “The main concourse of Grand Central – an enormous room, with 14 entrances – is only one part of an intricate structure that was opened to the public in February of 1913 and is justly famous as a crossroads, a noble building, an essential part of midtown Manhattan, and an ingenious piece of engineering that can handle large numbers of trains, cars and people at once. It was designed to handle huge crowds and to impress people with the immensity and the dignity of enclosed public places in a modern city. From the accounts left by its builders however, it was not designed to provide the experience actually available there today. That experience is one of the unplanned treasures of New York.” There is more about its history and its design here.

The market at Grand Central Terminal is where you go to for gourmet food – for artisanal cheese and bread, for speciality coffee beans, for hard-to-get spices, for fresh fish and for gourmet chocolates. You can read here an interesting description of the food merchants, including Zaro’s, Murray’s cheese and Penzeys spices, amongst many others. The market is located on the east side of Grand Central. It can be entered either from inside the Grand Central or from the entrance at Lexington avenue at East 43rd street. I entered the market from inside the Grand Central and after the overwhelming experience of the railroad station, when you walk through the market and come onto Lexington avenue, it seems as if it's one entrance connects you to the city's past and its other entrance to the city's future.

The Grand Central market came into being when a revitalisation plan was commissioned for the Grand Central Terminal in 1990. A $425 million master plan was presented at a public hearing and subsequently adopted in concept by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The retail specialists Williams Jackson Ewing had been asked to prepare a master retail plan to address services and amenities and the “new” Grand Central was reopened in 1998.

As I think about the Grand Central Terminal and its market, I recollect the days in Mumbai from twenty years ago when we travelled by the local trains starting and ending at the Victoria Terminus in Mumbai. It is a building designed by the British architect F.W.Stevens and built over ten years starting in 1878. It is an example of Victorian Gothic Revival architecture blended with elements from traditional Indian architecture. It became a symbol for Mumbai as a mercantile port city within the British Commonwealth. The building was originally intended to house the railway station and the offices of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. A number of ancillary buildings were added later, but it never had a market planned within it. The original building is still in use for suburban traffic and is used by over 3 million commuters daily. (Source: UNESCO World Heritage list )

Crawford market in Mumbai

The Victoria Terminus could have had a market section within it similar to the Grand Central Terminal market and it may have been successful with its floating population being extremely high. However, the Crawford market, just north of the Victoria Terminus had been completed in 1869. It is another magnificent structure of Mumbai with a built-up area of 6,000 sq.ft. It was designed by the British architect William Emerson and is a blend of Norman and Flemish architectural styles. It has been primarily a fruit, vegetable and poultry market with the merchants also selling imported food and cosmetics.

In Mumbai, the experiences of the Crawford market, the Victoria Terminus and the Flora Fountain, built in 1864 are woven together. The Hornby road (now named D.N.Road) linked the Crawford market to the Flora Fountain with several Neo-classical and Gothic Revival buildings built on commercial plots along the broad avenue road. Over the years, the market building had grown into an urban precinct with intersecting streets of formal and informal vendors selling textiles, stationery and household goods. This is an experience different from that of the Grand Central Terminal Market, where it is one street lined with shops on its either side and yet both the Grand Central Market and the Crawford market are part of the histories of railroad stations – one, in New York city and the other in Mumbai.

Related Post:
The Marketplace: Lonely Planet Blog Carnival
Faneuil hall marketplace
Marketplaces of the world: a Listing
Street corner in Mumbai

Stolen Coffee Room

The ‘Stolen Coffee room’ is a coffee shop which has most of its furniture and the art that fills its walls from Chor Bazaar. Now, that is something new, but that this coffee shop with the ambience and charm of a European café is in Nerul, that is “most unusual”. If you’ve lived in Bombay 15 years before or if you grew up in Bombay before then, you would know what I mean!!

It was a complete revelation to visit Nerul this time I went to Bombay, having lived away for many years now. It’s a relatively new suburb of Bombay. I grew up in Sion and for many living in South Bombay then, Sion was a suburb they had never been to and Nerul is further North! Today, Nerul has modern residential complexes and interesting restaurants that you would want to travel through the city’s traffic to get to (from South Bombay!) Thanks to Anjali who invited me to lunch at the Bangali Mashi's kitchen off Palm Beach road and then to coffee afterwards introducing me to two great places in one afternoon and simultaneously to the changing landscape of the city! You can already read Anjali's totally absorbing post Friendly Neighbourhood Bangali Mashi's Kitchen at her blog dedicated to food Anna Parabhahma. I also liked what Anjali has to say about the Stolen coffee room, to read more on that, you can go here: Lost my heart to the Stolen Coffee room

I’m happy to write this post and include it here on this blog because the ‘Stolen Coffee Room’ has a connection to the Bazaar. As it’s name suggests, it has been designed and put together from selecting objects from Chor Bazaar, which supposedly had stolen items for sale in the old days, though today it is the place to buy antiques in Bombay. I’ve written earlier about Chor Bazaar at Bollywood Posters and Bazaar Tour 2: Antiques Mumbai

Coming back to our coffee shop with its chor bazaar ancestry, it’s design concept is interesting. Not every table at the Stolen Coffee Room looks like another. Each table is a different one. The chairs are all different. As you sit in the café with your cup of coffee, you wonder where that chair has been before, did it belong to another café or was it a family that used it in their home before it was found at Chor Bazaar. There is history behind each painting on the wall, inside every kettle in the glass cupboard.

The other day, a friend who has grown up in Bombay but now lives in Bangalore talked of her excitement at seeing the new “high-end” coffee shop come up opposite her parents’ house in Hill road. “You know, the kind where you get a pastry for Rs.150!” she had said. She was so surprised to find how this once simple Hill road lane had changed with these “high-end” coffee shops coming up in locations where there had once been businesses with “immoral” activities; where brand showrooms had been willing to pay exhorbitant real estate prices for a space in a building which she so clearly remembers from her childhood to be a “panvati” building (That’s Bombay terminology for a building with a curse on it). These changes in old neighbourhoods were becoming more frequent and quite drastic.

Here, in Bangalore, we have been closely watching the changes that have been taking place in the ‘Adigas lane’ – that’s the lane off Bannerghatta road, close to the Arakere gate signal junction. Most of us here call it by this name because of the fast food restaurant ‘Adigas’. It occupies a place close to the corner property. Beyond that and away from the main road were independent houses. It was a quiet lane when we first moved here five years ago. Then, gradually, a Baskin Robbins came up, the vada-pav chain – Goli Pav, the Juhu Bombay Naturals Ice cream parlour, the Lakme Salon moved here. Further down, a gym has opened up and the library chain Just Books and now the Cuppa coffee shop which will be ‘opening soon’. All of this in the last five years.

There is so much that is happening in our lives. There are the old neighbourhoods that are changing rapidly and the new neighbourhoods that are leaping forward. We are becoming a consumerist society and our streets and neighbourhoods seem to mirror it all. You can look into this mirror and think 'our cities are changing' or you can look into it and think 'we are changing, did we want to?'

Related post:
Design Inspiration from the Bazaar

(Anjali, thanks for letting me take pictures with your camera and for your photograph of the blue facade!)

Market Diary: Sassoon Docks in Mumbai

GUEST POST by Laura Mannering. I love the colour and organised chaos of Indian markets. From the myriad blooms of Mumbai’s Dadar flower bazaar to the swirling incense, stacks of jaggery and bright cones of kum kum powder at Mysore’s Devaraja market; the pungent spice baskets in Delhi or the neatly-arranged displays of coconuts, limes and oranges at KR market in Bangalore.

There’s always hustle and bustle – but at Mumbai’s Sassoon Docks, it jumps up a notch. This is fast-paced fishy business, the local Koli fishermen delivering new catch from boats just come in, and their wives and daughters haggling hard with wholesale buyers. The competition between vendors is fierce – if you snooze, you lose.

Re-reading my diary entry, from the early-morning visit I made, transported me back to that long pier, packed with people and produce.

‘There was an absolute mass of people – women to-ing and fro-ing from the end of the dock, filling their plastic bowls with fish from the boats. They sell the catch to dealers on the dockside, again, mainly women. These ladies pile the fish into baskets and sell them on to individual buyers – there’s bargaining, crowds, wads of cash being flashed. We were propelled out of the way a dozen times. There’s a constant back and forth, no chance to stop.

People sit on the edge of the dock, watching the boats. On the vessels themselves, young boys and twenty-something men haul up baskets of fish from the depths of the hold. They stand waist-deep in a square hole in the deck, cold steam rising around them from the blocks of ice below, used to refrigerate the fresh catch. 

The fish from the hold are emptied onto the deck, hosed down and put into baskets. These are then thrown from the boat to someone standing high on the dockside. Miraculously, the full hampers never seem to flip over in mid-air.

Crabs, eels, calamari, shrimps, prawns, tiny fish, enormous fish, the catch at Sassoon Docks is abundant. The smell in the air is sweet and sickly, almost barnyard-like, rather than fishy. I can still taste it in the back of my throat.

On the way out, I chatted to a Japanese couple, togged up in plastic waterproofs (head-to-toe, the woman with immaculate make-up, to top off the outfit). They lived in Mumbai and were shopping for fish at Sassoon Docks for the first time. ‘We’re Japanese, we can’t live without fish!’ the man smiled, before turning back to select his dinner.'


Laura Mannering is a London-based journalist and market lover. You can visit her travel blog ‘World Out There’at www.worldoutthere.net

Bazaar writings from Windy Skies

I have been thinking for some time to put up a post that includes links to blogposts on Bazaars from other blogs. As I sat down to look for such posts, I first started to read the posts from Windy Skies, a blog I read frequently and have learnt tremendously from, and realised that there were so many posts in it that were bazaar-related. So, I am devoting this post entirely to writings from this blog by Anil P. who agreed to let me link to his posts and to use his photos as well.

The first post included here from Windy Skies is Leaves of Life. This post describes beautifully how bundles of fresh leaves reach street vendors in Mumbai every morning to wrap the flowers or the berries for customers or to make the patravali, the leaf plate made of dried leaves.

“In the commotion of vehicles ferrying in milk, vegetables, and newspapers, and the brisk haggling at roadside fish markets, invisible are the hands that quickly pick out small green packs from their bags, flowers neatly wrapped in leaves and secured by thread, inserting the small bundle in the door handle before stepping away to the next apartment. There’s rarely a presence to be sensed until the door opens to the fragrance of Jasmine.”

Morning rounds in Delhi neighbourhoods listens intently to the call of the vegetable vendor as he pedals through the streets of Delhi – the hawker who knows his customer preferences and who listens carefully for familiar voices from behind closed doors, calling out as he goes by each home.

“A quick glance out the window as women step over to the cart to buy vegetables and you can fairly predict the lunch menu at the Guptas, the Kapoors, and the Sharmas.”

It is the time spent at Mishraji’s Paan shop on Cowasji Patel Street in Mumbai that Paan Melodies remembers. You watch and listen to how the meetha paan is made and you go back into time as Mishraji talks about his old customers from many years ago.

“After ‘forty years and three months’ of running a paan shop in Fort, I doubted if there was anything that Mishraji did not know about paans. A paan rested in a corner of his mouth as he turned to me and spoke in the same manner in which he made us the two paans, soft, and deliberate, taking his time, and in tune with the deserted Sunday afternoon in Fort.”

In the Goddess Durga rides Tiger on Dussehra, you experience the spirit of the festival of Dussehra and the transformation that streets in India undergo with the coming of every festival season. There are changes in the marketplace with vendor carts that usually hold vegetables becoming now the vehicle for the Goddess as she is taken for immersion, marking the end of Dussehra.

“On the retaining wall of the bridge that enclosed the path at one end, vendors had stuck various posters of Hindu deities, depending on the gods they worshipped and under whose benign eye they carried out their business.”

Nashik Chivda takes you to Panchavati where divinity and discounts go hand in hand, where pilgrims step down to the ghat in the backdrop of a vegetable market and where you look for the Nashik Chivda and its many avatars.

“While vegetable vendors call out to be heard above their competition, Chivda sellers have to do no such thing. Meanderers, young and old alike, ushered in by the weakening noon combine a quick prayer at the many temples in Panchavati with an evening out by the river and need little encouragement to snack on Chivda sold from the several vending carts in the vicinity, prominently announcing their wares on colourful hand-painted boards.”

It is sometimes the leaves, sometimes the Goddess Durga and sometimes the Nashik Chivda that the stories are woven around but Windy Skies has in these posts been telling us about the essence of an Indian Bazaar. Thanks Anil, for this.

Bollywood posters

If you enjoy exploring the Bazaars in India, there is an antique market in Bombay with shops that sell posters from Bollywood movies. This can be an exciting way to spend an afternoon in Bombay. ‘Bollywood Bazaar’ is the name of a shop on Mutton street at Chor Bazaar in Mumbai that sells Bollywood posters and other Film memorablia from Hindi films. It has been a shop in this antique market since the last 65 years. It was in the ‘80’s that Shahid Mansoori first began to keep his own personal collection of film memorablia in his father’s shop here.

For Shahid, this was a passion and his sources were Cinema halls that were closing down, offices of distributors and private collectors. There are about forty people all over India who help him source the material. In the early days, few people took interest in buying old film posters. Today, Shahid sells in India as well as abroad. Every year, his collection is displayed at a private exhibition in Paris which is organised in collaboration with a French art dealer.

Posters can cost from Rs.50 to Rs.5000, depending on whether it is an original first print or a 2nd or 3rd print. In the old days, these were only hand-painted posters. Shahid also has some of these rare hand-painted ones in his collection. He has gathered also the booklets with song lyrics from films which were usually made available to the public after the release of a new Hindi film.

The original shop that belonged to the family was called ‘Mini market’. Later, Shahid Mansoori purchased two more shops on the same street. One of them is ‘Bollywood Bazaar’ which hires out film memorablia like posters, records and photographs and is managed by Shahid’s son Wahid.

The second shop is called ‘Super Sale’. It is managed by Sajid, his second son and caters primarily to a foreign market. They also have a warehouse that stocks more material which is often used in their ‘Film and T.V. serials’ decoration assignments. Sajid mentions that the two books that I might find useful are ‘Living Pictures’ by David Blamey and ‘Bollywood Posters’ by Sheena Sippy.

If one is a lover of Bollywood films and memorablia, Shahid Mansoori offers to relate tales of how some of the posters and photo stills of Hindi film actors and actresses found their way to his shop. In an antique bazaar and to an antique lover, it is perhaps these tales that are so much what he seeks. If you were to take a ‘Bollywood Bazaar tour’ it would center around these shops called the ‘Mini-market’ and ‘Bollywood Bazaar’ at this corner junction of Mutton street and its focal point would be Shahid Mansoori. It is a journey through time and a fun-filled one!

 
You can write to them at minimarket@rediffmail.com or call them on 91-22-23472427. They are closed on Fridays. 



Other Bazaar tours in India :
Bazaar Tour 1 : Dadar Flower Market, Mumbai
Bazaar Tour 2 : Antique market, Mumbai
Bazaar Tour 3 : Varkala, Kerala
Bazaar Tour 4 : Gandhi Bazaar, Bangalore

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.

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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

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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’

Fish market Mumbai

“Go to Sassoon Dock at break of day, and there before you are the two unchanging forces of Bombay – commerce and the sea – in jostling, clangorous, Technicolor profusion.” It is these words from Pico Iyer's essay on Bombay, in his book ‘Tropical Classical’ that keep coming back to me. I know that I have to go to Sassoon Docks someday. When I finally do, I wonder why inspite of growing up in Bombay, it has taken me so many years to come here.


I'm finally at the Sassoon Docks. I stand there for a moment watching the silhouettes of people and baskets in the first light of the morning. Sometimes, there is so much that one doesn't know about within one’s own city. I start to walk deeper into the market. The environment is changing rapidly - more people molecules and less space molecules. I try to be here without being noticed, try to not be in anyone’s way, which is so difficult to do, because there are so many koli men and women walking about and moving fast. You can’t afford to be in the way of a fisherwoman who is going past with an empty basket or a filled basket. In both cases, she is in a hurry and if you so much as fall within her path, she will either push you aside and move ahead or will swear at you.


The paths are not even defined, so you are always right in the middle of a path that you didn’t know would happen. This could be the only time you wished you wouldn’t understand even a bit of Marathi or had never heard any of these swear words to know their meaning. If they are flung at you, they sound worse than they ever did before. You sense your body mechanisms preparing their second and their third line of defense at this point. And later, as you think about it, you realise that you only like the fisherwomen for being themselves. That’s them and they don’t believe in packaging themselves in politeness.

This Fish Bazaar at Sassoon Docks is a place where the small boats and big boats arrive from the sea and the catch is sold at wholesale prices to fish vendors who then sell to customers all over the city. The fishermen in the small boats make one-day trips out to sea. The larger boats are out at sea for 7-10 days and there are 12-15 fishermen on each of these boats. The boats arrive at Sassoon docks by the evening or earlier in the day. They are offered for sale only the next morning. The smaller boats dock themselves on one side of the jetty and the larger boats on the other side. Baskets of fish are actually swung across to someone standing on the jetty, since the boats are not able to get closer than ten feet to the edge of the jetty when they dock.


The fish move through a series of people and locations, from small baskets that come off the boats to large baskets and plastic bags, from the fishermen who are still on their boats to the wholesalers who are stationed along both edges of the jetty. Along the centre of the jetty, there are roofed sheds and the space is primarily occupied by baskets that are waiting to be filled and taken into the city. Around this space and along the edges of the jetty is where the people movement is and where the bargains happen.


I begin to chat with one of the men who seems not in a haste. I'm sure that this man of quiet demeanour wouldn't mind telling me a bit about the bazaar and its flurry of activity. After all, he is not rushing like the others, with "no time to stand and stare". I learn that he is here to neither buy nor sell. He is a caretaker of fish baskets. While the fisherwomen are going about negotiating and buying the best fish for the best price, empty baskets and partially filled baskets are under scrutiny cover. The caretaker charges Rs.10 for each basket that he looks after. This man does not move from his place but his eyes are catching every movement around him. If there is a theft, he must take responsibility and he is expected to give back a fish-filled basket. He has only sixty seconds to speak to me. He then looks away. He has business to do. There are many such young caretakers all over the marketplace, minding the several baskets around them.


Perishability of the fish gives rise to another enterprise - the selling of ice. There are those who only sell ice to all the fisherwomen. The measure is a nine inch diameter basket, about 7 inches in height, which costs Rs.5 each. Fisherwomen buy the fish. It is put into their baskets and they immediately buy either one or two measures of crushed ice to cover the fish with. Outside the market gate, there are small ice factories, where these vendors buy the crushed ice for selling inside the market. It is a supply chain design strategy that interlinks various stakeholders who must each maximise efficiency to reach their peak values.


In the traditional shopping environments, bargaining has been an important communication channel. If one were to write a story about the art of bargaining in India, the best examples would perhaps come from a fish market. The fisherwomen are the masters of the art. If there are a hundred different ways to make a bargain, they are adept at all the hundred skillful nuances of the art. The words are sharp. The tone is sharp. It’s a completely no-nonsense interaction. On both sides of the bargaining divide, there is a fisherwoman. It’s like watching a sport, to see who will win and to silently rejoice in their victory and to move on to experience more.


I wonder about the marketing strategies. There are no publicity boards. Here, what works today is what worked years ago, when advertising was about how long you could walk and how loud you could shout. I see a young boy in a bargain with a few fisherwomen. He is trying to fix a price on a basket of fish that he wants to buy and must see who will give him a good price.


There are individual baskets that leave the marketplace, carried on the fisherwomen’s heads in which fish catch is moving out. Some baskets get loaded onto hand-carts which carry upto four large baskets each. You see these exit one after another once business is done. The hand carts go upto the gate onto the main road, where they are loaded onto tempos or trucks that travel as far as Andheri, Vakola and other suburban parts of Bombay. Some fish travel out by taxis, baskets are loaded into the back carrier and top carrier of the yellow and black cabs and are seen leaving the gates.

At Sassoon docks, I learn a little about the world of the fisherfolk community in Bombay – what they do, how they relate to one another, what is acceptable and what is not. The physical extent of the wholesale market is large, with no rigid boundaries. There seems to be a spatial organisation that is known to the daily visitors. It is undemarcated and unclear initially to a first-time visitor. But, as you stay here long enough, you begin to notice it. There are patterns of movement and patterns of behaviour that seem to govern the functioning of the marketplace.


There are some questions that arise as you try to understand the nature of the trading practices here. How is functionality achieved in this exchange amongst the vendors and the customers in a seemingly chaotic place? What establishes trust between the people? What is the history of interactions or what are the unstated, unwritten laws of relationships within a fisherfolk community? It is a long process from wholesale to retail vendoring. This is not an organised, systemised operation like that of a Fishing Corporation with its efficient trawlers and its iceboxes. And yet, there seems to be an intangible order influencing the commodity exchange that brings the fish from the sea through a series of stakeholders right upto its final consumption at a home or a hotel in Mumbai.


Even a partial experience of the marketplace is substantial experience for one morning – memories to cherish, sights to always remember in your mind’s eye. Once you are in there, you become an insignificant, irrelevant speck within this sea of people.

How to get there : Any bus going to Colaba bus stand would be ideal. If you are taking a taxi, you must say ‘Sassoon Docks’ but mention that you need to go to the Fish market there, because the market entrance is further down the road from the Sassoon dock main gate. The entrance is next to the Women’s Graduate Union or the Amy Rustomjee hall. The market is at its busiest from 5:30am to 7:30am. It is open until one in the afternoon.

Other Bazaar tours in India :
Bazaar Tour 1 : Dadar Flower Market, Mumbai
Bazaar Tour 2 : Antique market, Mumbai
Bazaar Tour 3 : Varkala, Kerala
Bazaar Tour 4 : Gandhi Bazaar, Bangalore

Mulji Jetha market - a Textile Bazaar in Mumbai

The Mulji Jetha market in Mumbai is the largest textile market in Asia. It is a hundred and thirty-six year old market and located near the Zaveri Bazaar, in Kalbadevi. It was built by a few Bhatia families who came to Bombay from Kathiawad and Saurashtra and has 954 shops under one roof. It is most unusual in its planning and spreads out into street-like aisles that are covered with a roof. It has some of the old, charming skylights that only a few buildings in Bombay have today. The shops are mostly wholesale outlets.

Included below is a google earth image of the Kalbadevi and Crawford market area. I thought this image is a good indication of just how large this market is in its physical extent. Seen in the left upper corner of the image, the market occupies a huge part of the Kalbadevi area encompassing several streets and equipped with 24 entrance gates. In the lower right corner of the image is seen the Crawford market, which is the oldest fruit and vegetable market in Mumbai.
Source : Google Earth

The textile market belongs to the Mulji Jetha Market association whose members are the shop owners. In conversation with the Secretary of the Market association, Mr.Rajesh Patel, I learn that there is a board of directors comprising of ten members. If there is a new entrant or trader who wants to buy a shop in the market, he seeks the approval of the Board. A premium is fixed over the price of the purchase which is paid to the Market association. For a sale price of Rs.50 lakhs for a shop, the premium may be about Rs.15 lakhs. These funds are utilised for the maintenance of the market. It has a security service for its many gates and more than 15 sweepers for keeping the premises clean. The type of traders include wholesalers and semi-wholesalers. The grey cloth comes from Bhiwandi and from Echal Karanjit in Maharashtra; suiting fabric is from Bhilwada; sarees are from Surat and cotton fabric comes from Ahmedabad.


In India, the story of the rise of Dhirubhai Ambani, from a small trader to a large business tycoon is well known. He began by setting up his own yarn dealership in a small 10ft x 10ft space in Mulji Jetha Market, for which it is said, he paid an exorbitant rent of Rupees 150 a month because it had a telephone. I include here some excerpts from an Inaugural address by his son, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman & Managing Director of Reliance Industries at the launch of the Multicommodity Exchange :

“My father, Shri Dhirubhai Ambani, returned from Aden in February 1958. He started a small office in Masjid Bunder. It was then the nerve center for trading of spices. In the midst of the din and bustle of this market place, he had a small office. With two tables and a common care-of telephone. All in just 150 sq. ft. of space. From there he started trading in cardamom, dry ginger, turmeric, black pepper and other spices.”

“Then, in 1959-1960, came an opportunity to export textiles. Against exports, one could get a licence to import yarn. Dhirubhai Ambani used this opportunity to buy cloth in wholesale quantities from Mulji Jetha market and export it.”

“Yarn and textiles fancied him. He dreamed of having his own world-class textile manufacturing facility. This, over time, led to the Naroda textile unit. From Tamba Kata to largest Polyester producer and Mulji Jetha Market to Jamnagar, Reliance has come a long way. A journey founded on the dynamics of commodity markets.”


Why would a visit to such a textile market be of interest to anyone who is not in the textile business himself? I think what is interesting here is that the entire textile bazaar is dominated by Gujarati and Marwari owners. It is therefore also culturally different from other bazaars in Mumbai. In Mumbai, there were communities who came from different States in India to settle here. It is interesting to see in the Bazaars in Mumbai how each of these communities recreates as much as possible their own cultural milieu.

The people from Gujarat who own shops in the Mulji Jetha and Zaveri Bazaar area attract setting up of eateries that serve gujarati food. The arrangement inside their own shops usually consists of cotton mattresses covered with white linen placed on wooden or built-in platforms. These are how they like their places of business to be.

Below is an image from Patan, a town in Gujarat, which was once its capital. Patan is a place known for its hand-woven Patola sarees that can take 4-6 months to weave and are priced high. As noted in Wikipedia, Patan was a part of the Maratha state of Baroda from mid-eighteenth century until India's independence in 1947, when Baroda became part of Bombay state, which in 1960 was separated into Gujarat and Maharashtra. If you walk down the streets in Patan, the shops have a traditional look that you see replicated in the Mulji Jetha market in Mumbai.


How to reach there : It is walking distance from the Crawford market and can be reached either by train from the Victoria Terminus station, Masjid Bunder & Marine Lines station or by bus or taxi.

Other bazaars in Mumbai:
Fish market at Sasoon Docks
Antique market in Mumbai (at Chor Bazaar)
Dadar flower market
Street corner at Crawford market

Other posts about Mumbai:
Bollywood Posters
The Gateway and its small enterprises

Bazaar Tour 2 : Antiques Mumbai

In India, when you travel to small towns, many traditional houses have antique furniture, brass items, paintings and artefacts that would fetch a high price at an antique market. These are family heirlooms and seem most appropriate within the houses where they belong. Often, a conversation with an older member of the family brings out a story of the wooden chest which goes back to three generations or more. Here, the number of years matter less and the number of generations matter so much more. The characters in the story have lived in this very house and sat in the same stone-floored verandah where you chat now with the old lady who is head of the household.

The experience of being in an antique market in the city of Bombay is completely different. I plan to visit the Chor Bazaar (literally translated as Thieves market) in Bombay. It is a central part of old Bombay and there are many buses from all over Bombay that can take you there. It is in the vicinity of Bhendi Bazaar. You can also get there by train from Masjid Road station, on the Central Railway line or Sandhurst Road station. On the Western Railway line, you can go upto Grant Road station and take a bus or a taxi from there.

As I chat with Imran, one of the antique dealers on Mutton street, he points out that the name ‘chor bazaar’ is actually from ‘shor bazaar’. Shor is the Hindi word for noise and he believes that the bazaar got its name from the noisy auctions of textile and wood that this area was known for. He says that these auctions continue to happen even today, but they are fewer compared to the past. Most antique dealers have warehouses where they are able to store much of their merchandise and wait until they are able to sell directly to clients. There is now also an export market and many dealers have a network that brings more business from high-end clients, who may never have physically come to chor bazaar. The outlet in Chor bazaar is only a very small part in the big money business. Imran’s own shop ‘Art Centre’ sells colonial and antique furniture and chandeliers. He is at shop no.13 on Mutton street and can be reached on 022-2347 4834

Imran continues to talk about the auctions. They are meant only for the dealers from Bombay. This auction market is not open to anyone else, although it is an auction that is held in the open marketplace. Within the shops here at Chor bazaar, you may often find a piece that has been acquired through an exchange with an antique dealer in Bangalore or Delhi. A growing antique market other than Bombay and Delhi is now in the cities of Jaipur and Jodhpur in Rajasthan. There are some beautifully polished pieces of Teakwood and Rosewood furniture in Imran’s shop that are not too ornate and would look elegant in a contemporary Indian home.

At another shop in Chor Bazaar – Mughal Art Gallery, there is a large collection of old wrist watches, pocket watches, clocks and nauticals. The owner, Rashid explains that he is in the third generation that runs this shop. He says that it is possible to service a watch if a customer insists on a working piece. However, a true collector would want an old watch without it being serviced so that all its original parts are intact and its value as an antique is high.

Rashid says that many of his special customers and regular buyers like Bollywood stars come to his shop at ten in the night. Chor Bazaar closes at 9pm and there is quiet and privacy at ten that allows a film star or his family member to visit and choose what they like for themselves. Rashid can be reached at mughal_artgallery@yahoo.com or 022-2345 4718. Within the Chor Bazaar or Antique market is the Bazaar for Bollywood posters, which I hope to put up as a blogpost soon!

Mutton street is lined with many other antique shops other than the ones I mention here. There is much to explore when you are here.

Other Bazaar Tours in Indiaa :
Bazaar Tour 1 : Dadar Flower market, Mumbai
Bazaar Tour 3 : Varkala, Kerala
Bazaar Tour 4 : Gandhi Bazaar, Bangalore