A couple nights back Meena took me into Sowcarpet market, where pigs and rugs are plentiful. Just kidding. Actually, no, they probably are. Well maybe not the pigs. Anyway. You park outside it and hop a bicycle rickshaw into the fray. Now, take all the craziness and stereotypes you’ve heard about India, and cram them into a few narrow, teeming backways, and you’re on the right track. Cattle with painted horns pulling wagons of wood; dusty, barefoot rascals hard at work yanking on your shorts with puppydog eyes; women in splashes of saree colour gossiping, haggling, seated in groups or carrying any manner of household item home with them atop their heads. And as you squeeze your way past, around and through people, while dodging hollering rickshaws or the occasional (potentially rabid) straymutt, you can glimpse every manner of shop and service you could ever need. It’s Wal-Mart with soul. Textiles, sarees, jewellery, produce, footwear, Menswear, hardware, underwear; street vendours hocking hot peanuts (so salty good), flower garlands, frying fish. Meena even got me a Henna tattoo.. story?.. done on my arm, right there in the street. She knows where everything is, too, even though it seemed like a maze of people and tiny shops to me. She says the market is the place to go when you need something specific, and she has her own personal favourite shop for every need.
But apparently Sowcarpet Market is just a junior version of the kind of market you might find in Delhi. I don’t know. I was saturated. And satisfied. This was the India I’d heard about and been dying to see.
But apparently Sowcarpet Market is just a junior version of the kind of market you might find in Delhi. I don’t know. I was saturated. And satisfied. This was the India I’d heard about and been dying to see.
5 comments:
Sounds amazing...thanks for bringing us along.
Hey I liked what u said here on sowcarpet....A walmart with a soul and yeah its the busiest market in chennai, anything at all u name it and u find it there and at a pretty good bargain too.
Hi Buddy its nice to c somebody from a different country and culture feeling gr8 about my place, kudos to u. am from sowcarpet currently in tokyo. i miss it , by reading ur note on it gives me gr8 feeling. skgolcha@gmail.com
i am feeling very nice to read about the place where i born and grew up, SOWCARPET, CHENNAI., on the internet. and that too written by a foreigner from vancouver. its a place full of energies and activities, lot of open fashion show happening on the streets and roads, lots of traffic, too much noise, here and there groups of people fighting on no useful reason. i am missing my place
i love sowcarpet very much,where i born and grown there i enjoyed all the happiness and sadness in my life all the things in one area still my breath i cant forget my area it is an historical place even around that but it will be unliked by the peoples who r in silent enviorment wat ever may be for me even no foreign countries can compared with my area thank u sowcarpet
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