The Market

New York City has its Stock Exchange. Wall Street is filled with the hubbub of wheeling, dealing, trading and commodity movement. Bangalore has Russel Market. Russel Market is a busy mercantile building in the city center and has its own hubbub of wheeling dealing, trading and commodity movement, only at Russel Market men with large meat cleavers whack off chicken heads to conclude a deal. Buy low…sell high and keep your eye on the vulture-like kites (birds of prey) that circle above, waiting to snatch any unwatched goods.

Russel Market is an institution that has long served the city. The surrounding streets are equally filled with the activity of pavement peddlers hawking goods and small shops selling crockery, clothing, foods and more. We entered the sprawling market to the sights, sounds and smells of things strange and familiar. There were potatoes, tomatoes, beans, oranges, cucumbers, pineapples, bananas, eggplant, coconuts, many varieties of peppers, watermelon, apples, cauliflower and other bounty of the earth we did not recognize for sale in cramped stalls. People mingled about, examined the quality of goods, bargained a bit, we suspected, had their selections weighed and then handed over colorful rupee notes. The neatly ordered bins of produce in the Kroger supermarket in Roswell, Georgia seem like a distant memory, half a world away.

Fish was displayed just outside the market building. Tables filled with seafood offered a variety of fish, eel and shrimp. But unlike Harry’s Whole Foods seafood section back home, bring your own ice. None of the seafood was chilled or refrigerated. We have been told that frozen and prepared foods are a relatively new food convenience to Bangalore. Even five years ago, food was purchased from vendors at the market who brought just enough each day to satisfy demand. Buy early.

From fish it was back inside to the mutton stall where whole carcasses of lamb were suspended on hooks from the ceiling, waiting to be rendered into smaller units on wooden chopping blocks. Finally, back outside, we visited the chicken parlours where live fowl sat with trepidation in cramped wire mesh cages waiting for the conclusion of the wheeling dealing, trading and commodity movement about them.

Kroger, however, has a few lessons to learn from Russel Market’s florists. We have been amazed at the beautiful fresh flowers that are everywhere. The first class hotels typically have an abundance of birds-of-paradise on display. A single rose on tables at all types of restaurants is not uncommon. Married women wear jasmine in their hair daily. Equipment and vehicles are decorated for holidays with garlands of flowers. We now know where some of this bounty of flowers is obtained.