Oral History at Russell Market

Recently, we’ve have been talking to street vendors and shop owners at Russell market in Bangalore. I include below excerpts from an interview:

“In the Russell market of old, the population was much less. There were many foreigners. You can say that one could buy just about anything here. There was nothing that was not available here. Now, there are many changes, there are traffic problems, there are parking problems. The maintenance of the market is not proper." 

We found that most of the older vendors have pleasant memories of the market and their day-to-day business. There was a substantial part of the clientele that was Anglo-Indian. Many of these were people who lived in Shivajinagar, the residential neighbourhood that envelops the Russell market and the 'Cantonment area' nearby. The vendors at Russell market speak with great pride about the wide variety of exotic fruits and vegetables you could buy here, some of which were imported from outside the country, especially during Christmas, when there was a 2-day Exhibition at the market, with vendors displaying some of the most attractive agricultural produce, and displays that competed for prizes at the Market Exhibition.

"Today, there are no officers in-charge like before. There used to be an office upstairs on the first floor of the market. There were watchmen all around the market building. There is nobody looking after this place now. This is a Corporation market. Earlier, when there were good officers, the market was maintained well. It was frequented by foreigners. Today, foreigners are afraid to come here. Maintenance is not proper. The shops are not proper. There is not a good enough accessway. They are giving our market a bad reputation"

Many of the vendors express the lack of support from the Municipal Corporation in terms of infrastructure upgradation and maintenance. However, we learnt that the vendors who have shops inside the market building pay a monthly rent of only Rs.200. The BBMP or municipality is reluctant to upgrade since their monthly revenue from the market is quite low and they are unable to get the vendors to pay a higher rent.

"Earlier, our business was so good. The people who now come to Russell market are fewer in number. Today, the market caters mainly to hotels and retail business has totally flopped. Parking has been a big problem. Even today, the vegetables you can get here, you will not get anywhere, the rare varieties. The customers don’t have parking space. Nobody can bring foreigners here to show them around."

Russell market is located at one end of Noronha road with the historic St.Mary's Basilica at its other end. It is a beautiful tree-lined avenue and one can imagine how beautiful the street would have been without the traffic congestion and lack of maintenance one finds here today. There have been attempts to resolve the parking problems but these haven't been entirely successful. One of the options has been to build a parking facility above the Shivaji Nagar Bus Stand in the vicinity. According to a few of the shopowners, this facility is not fully utilised since many visitors to Russell market are unaware of its existence. Secondly, a one-way access on the linkage between Shivaji Nagar Bus stand and Russell market requires cars to take a much longer detour before they can reach the Parking facility and many people opt for parking in front of the shops, adding to the congestion here.

"In the old days, I would wake up at four in the morning to come to the market. From 4am once our business started, until 10 am, we would not have the time to even have a cup of tea. That is how good our business was. We would eat our breakfast at 11am or 12 noon. After that, till 3 to 3.30 in the afternoon we would take a nap. Then, until 10pm, there would be so many people at the market. This was how it was about twenty years ago.”

These recollections of the vendors at Russell market were a way for us to recreate the bazaar in our minds. There is so little documentation available on our marketplaces that these oral history interviews become for us an important tool to understand the way in which bazaars work.

Interviewers : Rakshitha K.S. and Srishti Singh

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Walking in Lille

Why were we in Lille? It had been an old, neglected town of France until twenty years ago but now it was a booming tourist place. How had that happened? We were here to explore the town, the central market and its many pedestrianised streets, to understand the Urban Heritage strategy that the French town had adopted but also to simply walk the streets and enjoy ourselves.

The Government had taken a major decision to make Lille the crossroads of high-speed trains. This decision had turned around the economy of the place. The government had simultaneously begun to carry out architectural restoration of buildings in the town. Lille started to become attractive to investors as well as tourists.

What was the route we took? We had arrived at the Gare de Lille Europe – the railway station built in 1993 connecting UK, Belgium and the Netherlands. From here, we walked through the Place de l’Europe and the Allee de St-Louis du Senegal towards the Place de la Gare. Our first stop had been the Napoleon café, where we had our first coffee in Lille. After that, we had walked to the Central Market, a square that has overlooking it, the Opera and the Vieille Bourse. From here, there are many streets lined with shops which are completely pedestrianised.

We looked at the architectural facades – some French and some Dutch, we looked at the Cobblestoned streets, we looked at the old-style signage that most of the shops carried. There were no hoardings in this heritage town. Sometimes, we stopped, only to look carefully at a street lamp that accentuated a street corner.

There were between the heritage houses, a few facades that were contemporary, that used large panels of glass and yet the detailing bringing in an elegance that gave the modern shops a place here amidst heritage and old-world charm. In some streets, there were infills, houses that had been constructed anew with bricks and plasterwork for cornices – a few that seemed more authentic than others.

The afternoon was spent sitting outside at a coffeeshop – it was cappuchino with waffles for some and pancakes for others. A heritage tourist town needed places like these and one saw these cafes in Lille as elsewhere in other tourist towns in Europe.

This journey through a town with so many pedestrianised streets made us think about what the 'process of pedestrianisation' had been for Lille. How long does it take for this change to happen? How does one bring about this change? Are there hindrances along the way? How do shopowners collaborate with the government in making the town pedestrian-friendly and tourist-friendly? What are the regulations that the local municipality designs and enforces for better traffic management? These were some questions that come to mind, that make me think about how difficult pedestrianisation is in India. (I discuss here about The why's and how's of Pedestrianising Gandhi Bazaar)

It made us think about why the concern for heritage in our own countries is so little. Perhaps, we do not understand how 'everyday objects' can also be 'museum objects', since in India, as in many countries in South Asia, there is so much that is living heritage.

As we walked the Streets around the Central market and the old city in Lille, we saw the most enticing bakeries and shops selling French souvenirs. And, I thought, there is only so much you can do in one day and only so much you can eat in one day, but it is always a good idea to try everything you possibly can!!

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Lille Book Market

Young and old people walked about quietly through the courtyard and the passages around it, rummaging through old books and secondhand magazines, old photographs, posters and records. For us, it was a different book landscape than we were used to. The graphics were different, the text was different. Here and there in-between was a text that was familiar, an artist’s work that you had read about before or seen earlier.

This Book Market in the Vieille Bourse (Old Stock Exchange) Courtyard in Lille, France was really so charming a place and it is something that happens every day of the year. It was part of our one-day walking tour through Lille and we were told it had only French books and nothing much else! But then, as we walked into this heritage building with its interesting architectural details, we did want to just be here for a while.

Soon I picked up a black and white poster of a café in Brazil. We then talked to the Bookseller who had sold me the poster. I learnt from a Dutch colleague that he was perhaps of Algerian origin, that Algeria was one of France’s longest held overseas territories, with French Algeria lasting from 1830 to 1962. The Bookseller had a lot to tell us and I couldn’t understand a word since I didn’t know French! I did get to hear the translation and wished that there was a universal language for people from all the many different parts of the world!

Here's something else I learnt from my Dutch colleague: "Secondhand book markets in France are quite common, for example from the stalls along the Seine in Paris. In Holland, you won’t find too much secondhand book markets, in shops, yes. The main exception are the secondhand markets at ‘Koninginnedag’, when the Queen's birthday is celebrated. Then, all of a sudden the whole country seems to be mad about secondhand things and everybody is selling all stuff accumulated during the last year."

We saw a plaque at the entrance to the Bourse building that read: “In the year 1651, the Town of Lille obtained from Philippe IV of Spain permission to build on public land ‘a stock exchange’ to be used by merchants and to be enclosed and surrounded by 24 houses. The town of Lille sold to 24 traders the plots located on the marketplace and paid for the construction of the galleries, the paving of the inside yard and the four gates. This building was completed in 1653 and the architect was Julien Destree. The stock exchange is a fine addition to Lille architecture and a credit to the enthusiasm and energy of its citizens”

We had come into the courtyard in the morning soon after we had arrived in Lille and had just rushed through it on our way to the Palais des Beaux Arts. And now, as we returned to it in the evening, it was outside still drizzling sometimes, and sunny sometimes, but in the courtyard, nothing seemed to have changed – the books and the posters amidst the slow footsteps, including our own.

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The Witches' Market

GUEST POST by Meena Venkataraman.  We casually stroll into Witches’ market looking for souvenirs to take back home. Aimless tourists with a fancy camera on a hot Bolivian afternoon. In the heart of the hilly city of La Paz, a narrow alley leads us on and we follow, a little buzzed by the hot afternoon sun. On first sight we see an array of shops selling shawls and winter caps, sweaters for those needy of warmth and then an assortment of small souvenirs greets us. But this was just the beginning of the maze.

As we walked along, each step becoming a revelation, we discovered that we were in a veritable labyrinth of little alleyways leading in and out of descript buildings and fanning out into little walkways that disappear over the gentle curves of innocuous looking hills.

A Bolivian flag is spread out in bright colours over a balcony. From where we are standing, the traffic seems to descend over the teeming multitudes. I am watchful having been warned about pickpockets, and forewarned is forearmed. Beyond the multitudinous realms of El Alto stand over us at what looks like a safe distance, a million rooftops gleaming in the morning sun.

Walking into Witches market, what strikes you is the traffic running downhill towards you

El Alto in a distance, its vastness a constant looming high over La Paz.

We take a blind turn and come out into what looks like a dead end. And, there I see it, the dried carcass of a Llama Foetus. For the souvenirs and many trinkets is only a front for what is really sold here in Witches Market. Repulsion and Awe tug at my insides, and I stand transfixed, overcome by the tug of these two evenly matched polar opposites. "It is used for the foundation of houses" a passerby explains in broken English. I nod back acknowledging the receipt of useful information. Irony in language, its information I will never use 

a Llama Foetus, on display, along with other trinkets and charms

Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails? Not quite. But there are plenty of things on display bordering on the bizarre. This one seemed to be some kind of tooth.

The lair of witches, who mostly foretell what the future has in store, the Witches market is a surreal and fascinating place. They mostly wear dark hats, we are told. We walk around a little longer. With time and in response to the demands of tourists like me, the place seems to have grown and the roads are lined with hotels and restaurants, alongside shops where you find Herbal remedies for all of life’s ills, raw ingredients to appease the spirits of the Aymara world, folk remedies and other strange and interesting things like frogs legs, dried turtles and snakes.

Inspite of its associations with the morbid, the Witches Market is a lively, cheerful place. Every shop with its neatly stacked shawls is a riot of extraordinary colour. The warmth of the red, orange and yellow hues makes a simple task of picking out a keepsake seem like an impossible choice. Every turn took us to something spectacular. We haggled to our heart’s content. Sometimes the stony faces told us we had gone too far with the bargaining game only to beat a hasty retreat and try elsewhere.

One of the many colorful shops selling brightly colored shawls

This is a guest post by Meena Venkataraman. Meena is from Bangalore, India where she lived before moving to London a couple of years ago. An engineer by profession, she is also an artist and a freelance travel writer, both of which bring together creativity and her love for the outdoors. An avid traveller and a wild life enthusiast, Meena has travelled through much of India and the world. She blogs at Travel Tazzels

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