Travelogue, Banjara Imports

September 25, 2011, 8:00 pm

Today I had some business near Mohan Singh Palace Shopping Centre. While looking up the address on the internet I came across an article describing this shopping centre as a Delhi landmark and a throwback to Delhi of decades gone by. So, while I was in the neighborhood, I decided to check it out.

According to the blog I found, the “Mohan Singh Palace Shopping cum Office Complex” (so announces the unassuming blue and white sign board at the entrance) is perhaps Delhi’s first mall, built in 1969. It is a run down and shabby affair of a mall, and it’s hard to imagine that at one time this was a proper place of commerce, where foreign travelers from the Soviet Bloc would come to barter goods (since they weren’t allowed to leave their countries with much cash.) Now it seems that the main trade going on is in wholesale denim fabric and tailoring. There are quite a few tailor shops, seeming to specialize mainly in custom made jeans and suits. Maroon clad cleaning staff seemed to be relaxing rather than cleaning, vagrants were sharing a meal at the side of a walkway, and at least half of the shops were shuttered.

I made it up to the second floor to check out what is supposed to be another iconic Delhi institution, Indian Coffee House. I sat down at a corner table so that I would have a good view of the place. Walls of various shades of white give rise to a ceiling with exposed pipes painted red and accented with archeological splashes of whitewash. The square and rectangular tables placed around the room were at one point covered in melamine of blue and sea-foam green, but are now worn down to white in the middle. Ramshackle vinyl benches and chairs are busted open exposing the coir stuffing. The waiter was dressed in a uniform that at one point would have been grand, noble even, but now is merely grubby verging on comical. It consists of a once-was-white suit tied in with a wide green and gold belt (the gold has essentially wore off) and a flaring white turban with the same green and gold border, only this time you can see the gold clearly and the white is a much dirtier shade of grey.

I made the mistake of ordering chai, no chai here only coffee. I settled on a lemon squash (this is a throwback.) Observing the clientele, there was an elderly man whose shabby, once were fine, clothes perfectly matched his surroundings. It looked like he had been there all day nursing his coffee, and the two prominently placed no smoking signs didn’t deter him from slowly puffing on a cigarette. The rest of the customers were chatting or working on laptops in a relaxed manner, as though they intended to stay there all day. Quite the opposite of many urban cafes and eateries with their fast pace and trendy clientele.

I exited the Mohan Singh Palace Shopping Complex to find a street food vendor selling roasted sweet potato chat. His stall consists of a basket balanced on a bamboo tripod upon which he has a clay pot filled with burning coals. The whole sweet potatoes are arranged around the pot of coals in such a way that they are nicely charred all the way around. He then slices up the soft sweet potato (making sure to handle every piece well with his hands) and seasons it with masala and lime juice. Maybe not exactly sanitary, but definitely delicious.

Lunch was at Sagar Ratna Vegetarian restaurant located on K block of the outer circle of Connaught Place next to Nirula’s. The first thing to hit you when you enter is a mildewey, musty smell that is so common in India at the end of the monsoon. This you get used to in a couple of minutes however. The menu is typically representative of both southern and northern Indian cuisine. While the place was quite full of happy groups of people dressed in their Sunday best, I was luckily seated right away. I decided upon a light lunch, idli and rassam, as I had already snacked on that sweet potato. The creamy coconut chutney was in perfect contrast to the hot and spicy thin tomato based soup. Idli are steamed rice flour cakes and suitable for my gluten free diet. 

Twice today in Connaught Place I was approached by men trying to talk to me. They both used approaches that were supposed to seem helpful, such as, “what are you looking for” and “be careful of your bag, there are pickpockets around here,” and then proceeded to follow me and offer other helpful comments and ask me questions. My strategy in this kind of situation is to give a sharp stare of acknowledgement while refusing to say a word. I then walk on as though I can’t hear them. These kinds of situations are awkward and the “helpful guy” usually ends up commenting on my demeanor in a borderline insulting manner, but my reasoning is that I am not obliged in any way to speak to these people. I don’t know them, and I don’t have any business with them. A moment of somewhat rude behavior on my part prevents myself from any kind of entanglement with these kinds of dubious characters.

Back at Pahar Ganj there was a big Jain procession underway complete with elephants, drummers, brass bands and ox drawn floats with mechanized pantomimes powered by diesel generators pushed along on wheels and spewing black smoke into the air. 

Whatever Delhi lacks in hygiene and cleanliness it certainly makes up for in character. 

September 25, 2011, 10:30 am

A man walks down the road carrying a basket of instruments on his head for sale. Toys really, cheaply made stringed instruments played with a bow.  He manages to scrape out a hauntingly beautiful melody. The sound carries up to my New Delhi hotel room and I go to the window to see where the music is coming from.

A verbal collage of Delhi might go something like this: poorly lit stairwells with shoddy cement patch jobs and exposed electrical wiring; heavily laden oxen carts negotiating the thick traffic which consists of cars, bicycles, scooters and rickshaws; a shrine tucked into the base of a banyan tree, which in turn provides shade for opulent colorful piles of fruit for sale; a beggar woman sits in the metro stairwell, wailing that she just needs some milk to feed her child; and amid all this smartly dressed Delhi-ites make up for their lack of a hospitable living environment with fashionable clothes and pleasant airs.

Delhi has it all, the dirt, the filth, the poverty and lack of infrastructure. It also has the wealthy and the almost wealthy, the chic youngsters, fast food restaurants and trendy boutiques. Delhi is polluted, noisy, modern, traditional, old, new, and then some. Pahar Ganj, which is basically the tourist ghetto of Delhi, is one of the dirtiest, dustiest, most polluted places that I have ever been to in the world.

I have been in Delhi for three days now and my eyes are burning. My new strategy for dealing with Pahar Ganj is to take cycle rickshaws, no matter how short the distance. This way I avoid walking on the street thus minimizing the time I am directly exposed to the filth. I pay 10 rupees per ride, less than 25 cents. I need ease and health and well being, and the rickshaw pullers need the money.

Yesterday I went back to my favorite Janpath eatery, Saravana Bhavan, and for the first time tried a coconut rava masala dosa. I highly recommend it, lots of freshly grated coconut and some cashews cooked in to the thin round dosa.

For the most par though, I’m just finishing up with getting my shipment sent off, and thankful at the end of each day for a room to retreat to, somewhat cleanish, with a bed, a fan, and a door that closes.

September 14, 2011, Pushkar, India

A note on taking busses from Jaipur: the main government bus stand in Jaipur is called “Central Bus Station”. The deluxe and air-conditioned busses leave from platform number three, tickets for these busses are at platform three as well. In the past I have had the experience of auto rickshaw drivers taking me to private bus depots, I recommend taking the government busses. Also, years ago when I was going to a wedding in Bhilwara, I made the mistake of purchasing a ticket for a regular government bus. Now the regular bus is fine, but knowing that there is a better option in the deluxe air-conditioned bus I choose the later.

This morning my bus left Jaipur on time and without a hitch at 9:30 in the morning. I spent the rest of the morning absorbed in reading a book until we pulled into a town called Kishanghar at around 12:30. I decided that my main mission was to catch a bathroom break and get back on the bus before it left again. The “bathroom” turned out to be an enclosed communal urinal trough. No problem, I could deal with that. When I was done, I quickly returned to the bus, only to be told by the driver that our bus was broken down and I would be getting on another bus to complete the remaining 30 minutes of the journey to Ajmer. The bus I was supposed to be getting on was starting to pull out of the station, and so I grabbed my bag from under the bus and ran over. It was not until I was seated on the next bus that I realized that I had left my shawl and water bottle behind on the first bus. Oh darn it.

Good thing we were only 30 minutes away from Ajmer, as this new bus was a regular government bus. The suspension was such that you felt all of the unevenness of the road, the floor was about half an inch deep in sand, and dust billowed in through the open windows. At least I had a seat, and so was reasonably comfortable. Going with the flow.

The guide book that I had glanced through in the hotel lobby in Jaipur recommended against catching a taxi from Ajmer to Pushkar in favor of taking the local bus. The reasoning is that taxis are not allowed inside Pushkar anyways and you will have to walk into town from the outskirts. I’m thinking of testing this out on the return trip, as I’m thinking I’d prefer to take a taxi to Ajmer instead of the bus on the way back. (The guide book I read this in, by the way is Rough Guide to India, I was joking later that I'd rather have the "VIP Guide to India".)

Without luggage, the bus would have been fine: an averagely crowded Indian local bus, filled with young college students as it was around 2:30 in the afternoon. With my small suitcase and shoulder bag, however, I found it a bit challenging to push my way on and find a seat. Pushing my way off at the end was equally challenging, and I found myself thinking that the passengers trying to get on pushing up against the passengers trying to get off made for a horribly inefficient system. The drive from Ajmer to Pushkar is however, quite pleasant and picturesque, the hills covered with a verdant scrub after the generous monsoon this year. 

As the guidebook had said, there are no autos or rickshaws at the Pushkar bus stand, and so I availed the services of one of the men with carts available to help you with your luggage. He knew the way to the Everest Hotel where I had a reservation. It was uphill part of the way and I thought that since my small suitcase is on wheels, it would have been easier for the man to just pull my suitcase instead of the heavy cart, but he knew the way and I did not, and so I was grateful.

The Everest Hotel seems comfortable enough: hot showers, wifi internet, and a rooftop restaurant with a nice view of the pretty town of Pushkar surrounded by prominent green hills. I had lunch on the rooftop, thought the food was too salty and oily for my taste. Right in front of where I was sitting is the crumbled ruins of what was once a multi storied building. With large sections of roof and walls missing you can see inside to where the monkeys have taken over. While having my lunch I watched the monkeys assuming various positions of languidity while they groomed each other. I thought about how in modern western cultures we have for the most part lost that physical connection with one another. Physical touch is for us reserved for very specific relationships, and under specific circumstances. Then a quarrel broke out among the monkeys, snarls and quick retreats. This led to my contemplation of the relationship between intimacy and conflict.

After lunch I set out to discover what Pushkar has to offer. A series of winding lanes leads from the hotel down to the lake and the main bazaar that seems to encircle it. I wanted to make sure that I could find my way back, so I took note of my surroundings: shrines, a vegetable stall, sections of lane dedicated to sweets production, baskets of fragrant rose petals for sale. The town of Pushkar is quaint and still fairly traditional.

Once down at the lake I deducted that my hotel is situated near Gau Ghat, or “Cow Ghat”. I removed my shoes before going down to the Ghat as that seemed to be required of me, but once on the steps felt the slightest bit squeamish as the steps are covered in bird droppings and cow dung. It seems that people feed the pigeons on the ghats here, and you really just have to walk into the flock of pigeons and expect them to make way for you. I was approached by a man named Shiva, who gave me a handful of rose petals to offer into the lake water. I went as far as to accept the petals and made an offering but stopped him when he got out his coconut and other puja paraphernalia, I just wasn’t into getting sucked into his thing right then. I wanted to be left to myself, and he obviously wasn’t leaving me alone, so I slowly got up and tiptoed back through the pigeon droppings to find my shoes.

Next I wandered through the bazaar, inquiring prices and browsing around. I was pleased to discover some wholesalers with competitive prices for some things I’m looking for. I had heard that Pushkar is a place where traders do their buying, especially clothing manufacturing. From what I can tell so far, the atmosphere is so mellow and laid back, it seems like a nice place to hole up and get some manufacturing done.

Feeling satisfied with my initial forays and having made some purchases of personal essential items, I wandered back to my hotel for the evening. 

September 14, 2011, Jaipur, India

The used textile market turned out to be a success. There is an area of the market in which Gujarati ladies have their booths with used clothing. While most of the goods for sale consist of well-worn garments, I managed to root out some interesting saris, dupatas, which can double as belly dance veils, and an embroidered skirt set.

I started out shopping at one booth, and by the time I made my way to the second booth the word seemed to be out that I was buying saris and dupatas. At this point I was comfortably seated on one of the vendor’s rope cots while the rest of the vendors came to me. It did rain hard for about 10 minutes, during which time I took refuge under an awning while the vendors covered their wares with plastic sheets. Once the rain stopped, it did get oppressively hot in the sun and one of the ladies obligingly opened an umbrella to shade me and “keep me from becoming black.”

The prevailing sales tactic seemed to be excessive pushiness, and after about two hours in the heat I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore. My purchased goods were tied up in a bundle, which I heaved up on my shoulder. I then made a run in the direction in which my auto rickshaw man was waiting for me. I was chased part of the way by the seller of a particular turquoise skirt set that I had been eyeing up.

The next market of interest that I visited is called Eidga Market. It’s located on the outskirts of town, on what looked to be the highway towards Delhi. Quite visually interesting, I was kicking myself for not bringing my camera with me. Goods sold at this market include cheap readymade garments, cheap house hold goods, and fabric remnants. The operative word here is cheap, both in price and quality. Although I didn’t find anything that suited my own buying needs, this market could be a gem for a seamstress or costume designer. The fabric remnants are quite interesting, and include hand block printed cotton and gaudy sequined polyester chiffon.

Tomorrow I’m off for Pushkar. I’m still a little undecided if I should go there or one of the other larger centers in Rajasthan. The downside of going to Pushkar is that it’s one of the stops along the old hippie trail, and thus I expect a kind of hippie-oriented tourist trap. The upside of Pushkar, I imagine, is that it will give me a break from the urban landscapes of Delhi and Jaipur that I’ve been dealing with.  I could certainly use some down time and relaxation. I’m also curious to see what Pushkar has to offer shopping wise. I’ve bought a ticket for the deluxe air-conditioned bus which leaves from the main government bus stand in Jaipur. Under advice from the manger of my hotel here in Jaipur, I will take the bus to Ajmer and then change busses for Pushkar. He claims that the Ajmer bus will be more comfortable than the direct bus to Pushkar.

Sept. 11, 2011, Jaipur, India.

Sometimes the local auto rickshaw drivers can be quite helpful shopping guides, particularly if you are looking for something specific and don’t know where to find it. This is especially true for wholesale buying. Of course, you must remember that your friendly auto driver is on the take and will be getting a sales commission on any purchases that you make, ranging anywhere from 2 to 30 % depending on the nature of the business. Keeping that in mind, choose to go with a driver that you feel comfortable with, perhaps one who sits at the auto stand near your hotel. You can pay a daily rate to get taken around. You can choose to negotiate the rate ahead of time, or wait and see how much driving around you actually do. If you do make purchases while the driver is showing you around, then don’t worry about paying any waiting charges.

For the past two days my Jaipur shopping tour guide has been a leper auto rickshaw driver named Ganesh. Ganesh inquired if I wanted to see some textile factories. I’m interested in buying some hand block printed textiles wholesale, and so he took me to some textile factories out in Sanganeer, the textile manufacturing area of Jaipur.

The first place we went to seemed like a tourist trap to me, but none the less I found the lesson and demonstration on hand block printing and vegetable dye techniques interesting and fun. They had a little gimmick where I got to try my hand at block printing on a small cotton square, and then the final picture got stamped with their company logo. I thought that was a pretty neat little marketing touch.  It turned out that I didn’t connect with the kind of supplier I was hoping to, but I ended up finding some other things that were on my shopping list. I picked up a dozen old Rabari and Kachii embroidered cholis at one of the textile warehouses and also connected with a small manufacturing unit that will be making some organza curtains for me.

Today was a completely different kind of shopping day. We spent the morning at a junk market. When I say junk, I mean junk. This market has it all when it comes to junk: broken electronics, metal hardware, used clothing, old coins, and a smattering of interesting collectibles mixed in. I came away happy with my purchases, for under $20 I filled a bag full of vaguely interesting trinket objects including an old brass jewelry scale, a tattered cigarette box, some very dirty old framed pictures and other brass brick-a-brack. 

Tomorrow Ganesh the leper auto rickshaw driver will be showing me around again. First we will go to a used textiles market, and then to an automobile accessories market. Back in Canada I recently purchased a shortie school bus, a 1966 GMC Superior Motor Coach, and I’m looking for some of that awesome lorry bling that you see all over India

A painted vegetable delivery truck. Part of my research for the project of refurbishing my school bus involves documenting  the painted trucks in India.