The 'Second to None' Flea Market

Some time ago, I went to the ‘Second-to-None’ flea market here in Bangalore. I was thrilled to get second-hand DVD films for half-price and some for less than half-price! All of us who went had come back picking up something that was useful to us and had been useful before to someone else. This was such a good idea, we thought, to have a place where you could bring used goods, and recycle them. I found out that this was an initiative started by Anu Gummaraju and asked her if we could do an interview. I’m sharing it here:

As a person who conceptualised ‘Second to None’, could you tell us about yourself & the initiative?
I have been in the content and communication stream for over 14 years. I was a sub editor and a writer for 2 years, before I joined Infosys as a technical writer. In Infosys, I worked in the Communication Design Group, first as a writer, then as a senior manager, on content development, content design, and content usability.

Though corporate life gives you time for little else, I had always been conscious of wastage and recycling and conserving resources. I would try to practise it in little ways at home. After I quit full time work two and a half years ago, I started thinking and practising this to a greater extent. I was looking for ways to recycle used goods in Bangalore, and there were no options that seemed feasible. Apart from some Gujri markets and the Avenue Road on Sundays, there was no concept of a flea market where one could buy and sell used goods in Bangalore.

So, on June 18th, one year ago, I started an online group on Facebook - ‘Second to None (220)’. It was a platform for people to share ideas on recycling, and buy and sell their used goods. I spoke to Reena Chengappa and Shilpa Kamath, old friends who were also passionate about green living, and they agreed to come on board as co-organizers.

How and when did the Flea market begin? 
At the same time that the online FB group was started, we had the physical flea market in mind, as it would be the real thing, to give Bangaloreans a flea market experience, with used goods, collectibles, in an open, fun atmosphere. We had the first physical market in July 2011. By this time, the online group had about a hundred members and when we spoke about the flea market online, there were so many enthusiastic responses from members who said they would come and sell / buy. So, many of the sellers and visitors were members of the online group. We had some coverage in Bangalore Mirror as well before the flea market and that brought in more sellers and buyers. We had 25 sellers over two days in the first market, which was held at Jaaga on Double Road. This seemed like the perfect space to have a market, and we have had all our markets there.

Who are your customers and what do they enjoy the most about your Flea market?
Our customers are ‘Second to None’ members who are keen on recycling. Since we’ve started, we have had word reach out to more of the public and today, customers are people who are making an effort at conserving resources, reducing waste and also looking for good deals. They find products which are in great working condition, but cost much less than new products.

Do you see any similarities (of this Flea market) to a typical ‘Indian Bazaar’?
The casual atmosphere that our markets have are very much like Indian bazaars, I guess. We have stalls, some people bring carts and other bazaar-like ways of selling their stuff. We have some food as well.

Are there experiences from flea markets in India or elsewhere in the world that you would be able to share?
I have not been to any flea markets in India - where you can actually buy used goods. In the US, it used to be a great way of finding treasures, collectibles, vintage stuff. We used to enjoy shopping at flea markets for those. We would also look for good deals on household things. So now, we are in a small way recreating that kind of an experience, where, in our markets, people are selling collectibles, vintage items, used household goods.

Do you see this as a replicable model in the Indian urban setting?
Yes! Every community / area can probably have a regular flea market. All it takes is some space and interested volunteers to do some minimal organising. We are not used to this culture in India. In fact, buying second hand goods, as they are called, is frowned upon by many. So, it is a matter of changing our mindset. And once you start, you see how many people there are who embrace the idea. We are 3600+ members today and have inspired people in six other cities to start similar groups.

When will your next flea market take place and how can people participate in it?
Our next market is slated for July 1st week or so, we have not yet finalised the date. It will be bigger than the previous ones. We have also had organisations like Goonj, who collect and distribute used clothes, toys, books and household goods to people across India, partnering with us. We will have them and a few more, collecting donations of goods by people, at the next market. If you'd like to come to our flea market or join our group, do check out: Second to None (220)

Buddha festival at Namdroling Monastery

We walked into the Namdroling Monastery through its painted gates in that quiet afternoon. There came upon us a stillness that halted our steps and our thoughts. A performance that was a prayer within a square courtyard and rows and rows of Tibetan monks in orange and dark red robes sitting on all sides. A few monks chanted, a few counted beads in their hand whilst in the centre of the space; there was the slow movement and the slow chanting of the performers. It was a quiet chanting, that those who chanted could hear and not others. The sounds of drums and cymbals as if coming from somewhere far away.

We had come here on a day when the Buddha festival was going on at the Monastery. According to the Tibetan calendar, the month of June is a special month for practice since the enlightenment and parinirvana of Buddha falls on the 15th day of the month. This is known as Saga Dawa Dhuechen. The Dhuechen are the 10th and 15th days of the month and the fourth tibetan lunar month is called Saga Dawa. The Losar cham (Lama dance) is performed during this time and we had a chance to see it that day.

The Namdroling Monastery is in Bylakuppe, the largest Tibetan settlement in India, near Kushalnagar, in Mysore district. This is the link to the official website of the Namdroling Monastery. This Tibetan settlement is about 82 km from Mysore city and 220 km from Bangalore. The monastery was established by His Holiness Pema Norbu Rinpoche in 1963 and is also known as the Golden Temple. In 1978, the Ngagyur Nyingma Institute, a Center for Buddhist studies and research was established here. It houses five hundred monks studying the Buddhist sutras and tantras in a nine year program. The monks graduate to become Khenpos and are then sent to teach in different Nyingmapa (a lineage of Tibetan Buddhism) monasteries and Centers of buddhist learning.

I came across this really interesting website of the Tibet Oral History Project - which has interviews of Tibetans living in India - stories from the last generation that had lived in a free, unoccupied Tibet and who have now lived in exile for several years, many of them in Bylakuppe.

At the festival that day, there were between the rows and rows of seated monks, a few monks standing and walking around. They were not chanting, they were selling food. They held in plastic bags and plastic crates several items for sale. There were cold drinks, packaged drinking water, potato chips and slices of watermelon. How long had the monks been sitting here in this square? Was this meant to be uninterrupted prayer? There was also hot chai and cold buttermilk being served without a charge. A few monks walked along the sides and the seated monks bought what they needed, a snack or a drink, to sustain for a while.

This experience at the Buddha festival that day made me reflect on the ‘act of consumption’ and the ‘act of restraint’. I think these thoughts came because what we saw that afternoon was a congruence of both. On the one hand, we need to sustain our body and consumption becomes a part of our daily life. On the other hand, we need to sustain our mind that seeks peace and contentment and restraint seems to be the path to follow.

At the Namdroling Monastery, as in other monasteries, the monks who immerse themselves in the teachings of the Buddha have exercised restraint in the way they live. Outside of the Monastery, it is the ‘act of consumption’ that takes precedence over everything else. We buy clothes, we buy food, we buy gold, we buy books and we buy furniture. We shop and we consume. I thought perhaps the Bazaar becomes then the embodiment of this consumption and its various hues.

There are also the temple bazaars where what we buy, we offer to our Gods – sometimes its flowers, sometimes its incense. The Temple bazaar is a place where we mark time before or after our prayers. It continues to be an ‘act of consumption’ that falls on our path of momentary restraint and holiness. The bazaar around the Mylapore Temple in Chennai, like other temple bazaars, is about daily necessities, religious bonding and periodic festivities. In the temple town of Tiruvannamalai, there is a central marketplace for both the devotee and the common man. As people go about the town and the marketplace, some consciously seek spiritual attainment and others fill their lives with days of labour, reaching sometimes the same destination without seeking it.

It seems to me that in every bazaar and in every moment in our lives, the act of restraint and the act of consumption emerge from within us quite in the same way, for one there is the temple and the monastery, for the other – the bazaar.

Related Posts:
the Tibetans at the Cliff
Mylapore Temple Bazaar, Chennai
Market streets of Tiruvannamalai

Gujari Bazaar – the 600 yr old market

I reached Ellis bridge in Ahmedabad on a really hot afternoon in March this year. I was seeing for the first time the Gujari Bazaar. I had heard about it many times before. I had read about it before I came here. This self-managed bazaar was locally called the ‘Ravivari’ or Sunday market. It had more than 1200 registered traders, most of them selling used items and a few selling new goods.The livelihoods of nearly 20,000 households were linked directly and indirectly with this market.

One would think that anything 600 years old would look old. It didn’t. With the way people went about in the bazaar, this did not look like a part of a period film. It just looked like a crowded bazaar that belonged to the present. However, it was a present that was part urban and part rural. As I entered the bazaar from one end of the Ellis bridge, there was a line of street vendors selling fruit on what seemed like high wooden platforms until I realised that they were camel carts (without the camels).

Ahmedabad was a city that had continued to be both urban and rural with nomadic tribes living in some neighbourhoods, with artisan communities settling here from other parts of Gujarat, with the city bearing ways of living that reflected traditional customs alongside contemporary needs that it was never quite urban in the way western societies define ‘urban’. It reminded me of the “urban-rural continuum” that Kerala had been known to have (in discussions about vernacular architectural traditions) with no discernible boundaries between the paddy fields and urban infrastructure.

The question that came to my mind was: How does a bazaar sustain for 600 years? For anything to sustain, it must be resilient enough. We do know that. How was this resilience built into our traditional bazaars? Was it in the nature of the people who sold their wares? Was it in the relationships and networks on which the buying and selling rested, that the resilience was embedded? Was it in the indigenous credit systems? How much of these still survived? Why had this bazaar not gradually faded away or been buried into the history of the city of Ahmedabad?

As I think about it now, knowing that it was a 600 year old bazaar had been so much in my mind before I reached there and after I got there, that I could think of nothing else for some time. As John Berger says in his book, The Ways of Seeing – “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled” What I also knew from before was that this vibrant bazaar was in the centre of controversy – the Sabarmati Riverfront development project threatened to displace the bazaar that had been a source of livelihood for several vendors. The Gujari bazaar had a long, long history, but a short-lived future.

The historical background of the bazaar tells us that it was started in 1414 by Sultan Ahmed Shah, the Founder of Ahmedabad. At that time, it operated on Fridays and spread from Teen Darwaza to Bhadra Taar office. The 1941 communal riots had forced the closure of the bazaar for some time. It reopened a few months later, first near the Siddhi Sayyed mosque and later near the old Civil court. It was in 1954 that it was finally shifted to the Sabarmati riverfront at its present location.

Today, the Gujari bazaar is seen as a marketplace that belongs to the ‘Intangible Cultural heritage’ of the city of Ahmedabad. It has been included by the Centre for Environment Education (CEE) in its ‘Project Parampara’ which is a documentation initiative supported by the Ministry of Culture. There are three films on the Gujari bazaar which can be accessed at http://www.paramparaproject.org/traditions_gujari-bazar.html which highlight the role of the Gujari bazaar association and the linkages between artisans and traders who have participated in the bazaar for many generations.

The short-lived future of the Gujari bazaar has been discussed in public meetings and efforts continue to be made by not-for-profit organisations and educational institutions in the City to propose alternatives to the displacement of tradition and livelihoods. In December 2009, a Public hearing was held in Ahmedabad to discuss displacements experienced by the poor and included the case of the Gujari bazaar. This is a link to the Report of Public hearing on Habitat and Livelihood displacements.

The verdict of the jury had said that the Gujari bazaar was a heritage activity of the city and its shifting needed to be re-examined by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation with the participation of the traders. A forum of concerned citizens of Ahmedabad called ‘Our Inclusive Ahmedabad’ had organised this Public hearing and continues to battle with the government for the rights of the vendors.

If an informal, temporal marketplace has been a part of a city for six hundred years, why would we want to let it go? It's time perhaps to reflect on sustainable development as Indians understood it in the past. What cultural processes and planning processes did they deploy that we can learn from? What can we remember from what we know from our past that will help us design a better future for our cities?

Here is a link to: www.gujaribazaar.org which discusses the Livelihood and Community-related aspects of the bazaar and the efforts of management and design professionals from IIMA and NID towards working with the Ahmedabad Gujari Association in the recent past.

Related Posts:
The Riddle of Russell market
Gandhi Bazaar: Street vendor eviction
The Informal Economy and Urban space
The Politics of the Marketplace

Existential Blogger

I sat down to write my next blogpost and it looked like the handbrakes were on or something. I wasn’t making any progress. I couldn’t make any progress. No thoughts. Then, came the question, not for the first time: Why do I blog? It’s an existential question, which I never try to answer. If Douglas Adams’ supercomputer Deep Thought had taken seven million years to think about the question ‘what is the meaning of life’ only to come up with the answer ‘Forty-two’, what was I, a mere earthling going to find here? Nothing. So, while I wait for my world of blogging to find its own meaning, I thought I’d write about some of the people I’ve met on this galactic experience in the blogosphere.

There’s been fellow bloggers who’ve been extremely supportive with their comments and suggestions. Amongst these have been Radha Vijay who writes at Musings of a Night Owl, Meena Venkataraman who writes at Travel Tazzels and Anjali who writes at Annaparabrahma. I have often read and re-read posts at Windy Skies learning something new each time.

Two years ago, on a suggestion from a friend, I wrote a mail to Lonely Planet asking to be a part of their Blogsherpa program. I started to contribute as a ‘Lonely Planet Blogger’. This also meant being part of an e-group of Travel writers and Travel Bloggers who posted regularly on Lonelyplanet.com. There was a lot to learn from the questions and answers that went back and forth in this forum. There were places that I’d never heard of before that a fellow blogger would write about and it would make me curious. Met some really nice people there.

The friend who had suggested writing to Lonely Planet had been travelling in India for three months and we had first met in Bombay. Laura Mannering had quit her job as a Features Editor in the UK to give herself some time to see the world and to meet new people. Laura got back to London after an entire year of travelling and started a travel blog: World out there. It had fascinated me when I had first met Laura that one could travel on and on for a whole year. And now, months later, I was reading her detailed accounts of the places she had been to, the stories I had missed, the places that had happened in the months after the time in India.

In the early months of being part of the Blogsherpa program at Lonely Planet, there were exchanges with bloggers, through the Blog carnival series that was started and through writing guest posts. At this time, I came across ‘A Traveler’s Library’ – a blog that reviewed books and films that inspired travel. That was for me such an interesting way to think and discuss travel. Vera Marie wrote about places she’d been to and books she’d read and you felt as if you were sitting across the table listening to her, forgetting that all of this was only coming to you from a computer screen.

Then, I came across Wandering Educators - a global community of educators who share their travel experiences and dialogue about education and travel. They write about Artisans, Intercultural Education, Performing arts and many, many other interesting stories about travel. Also, there was Pocket Cultures – a group blog that makes connections between people from different cultures. Some of their collaborative posts have been really interesting such as this one: School days around the world where contributors from around the world talk of a typical school day in their country.

A few months ago, I learnt about 10 year itch, travel consultants who offer custom designed trips to India such as the Ladakh Gompa circuit, MP Unplugged, Temples & Tigers, the Kochi loop and many more innovative itineraries . And, more recently, I discovered the creative team at Spark the magazine – an online literary magazine that explores the world through writing, photography and art. They have some really interesting stories, for example, in Feb 2012, Spark interviewed the co-founder of Grassroutes – a fellowship program that encourages travel through rural India and working with changemakers.

I think I will stop now. If the next blogosphere underpass construction project suddenly demolishes Indian Bazaars (Douglas Adams talks of the intergalactic highway, in Bangalore we have the road dug up anywhere and everywhere to build an underpass, so it's the first on my recall...), at least the draft acknowledgement piece of this 'Saga that was going nowhere' would have been written!