Crawford market. :)

I don’t really enjoy shopping trips. I usually accompany my mum to markets, and end up being the donkey, just carrying the shopping bags around, and not talking much.

CRAWFORD MARKET

So as usual, I wasn’t very excited when ma told me we’ll be going to Crawford Market. But this trip turned out to be the most unusual, for reasons I still don’t understand… The place is beautiful! Everywhere you see, you find people. Industry defined everyone’s life. The first thing that I felt about the place was energy. There was so much of it, that you couldn’t help but acquire some of it. No wonder, once you start spending there, there’s no end to it…

They say you get everything here. From pots and pans to food, clothes to shoes, medicine, interior decoration, personal care, woodwork, and what not. This is the place where I heard, “kitna piece chahiye?” when a costumer enquires about costs. It is probably the only place where I saw people selling towels, and also safety pins (!) in kilos, and water melons in scores. There were craftsmen, artists, designers, mullahs, illegal drug dealers, bribed policemen, shopkeepers with pirated CDs, MMS and blue film dealers, everything.

But that all was not what pulled me closer to the place. All that was merely the shell, the cover, a blanket of needs and desires that was pulled over the crazy depths of Human Will. There was an internal struggle, a battle to survive in the hostility of the world around them. There was an understanding among all the locals. We call it tit- for- tat. The good was what was absolutely visible. But there was the bad, which occasionally showed up, and there was the ugly, hidden somewhere in the heart of the place, known only to those who cared to look for it. Somewhere in the air was love that people lost over the time to more pressing issues in life.  There was money, a lot of it, as there was poverty. But somehow, everybody was happy. It was probably this happiness in the mud-pond of the forced life that defines most people in Mumbai, that drew me towards the place. It was love at first site (pun intended)...

People say you get everything at Crawford market. I wouldn't deny.