Day Twenty-Five: The Market (7 July)
on From Banglatown to Bangladesh (Bangladesh), 18/Sep/2010 07:51, 34 days ago
My favourite market in Khagrachari is the one right by my house. I wade through the fallen leaves and emerging weeds that make up my garden path, through the tin gate that marks the entrance to the overgrown jungle surrounding my home, and down towards the road. I turn right at the corner, and take a few steps, and there it begins:‘Modhupur Bajaar’. ‘Honey village market’ by name, and in practice, my shopping destination of choice.The market consists of a short road, with a small fork in the middle. From lunchtime onwards, men and women gradually come in from nearby villages, carrying their goods, and displaying them in woven baskets and mats on the ground. No moral dilemmas about buying summertime fruits out-of-season, no weighing up of‘food miles’ here; you don’t get much more local than this.I make this walk four times a day: to and from work in the mornings and evenings, and at lunchtime. It is only returning home, at the end of the day, that this market is busy. Coming from the office, the market begins with a line of Bengali-owned wooden shops and tea stalls, all selling the same snacks and grocery items. Then there a few mobile food stalls: selling roasted nuts, small bowls of curries for pre-dinner hunger pangs. The umbrella repairmen are there, and a couple of men with mats, displaying Western-style clothes, mainly for children, and plastic hairclips.The road widens slightly then, and the shops continue on either side: groceries, tailors, barbers, tea-stalls, a fabrics shop, with indigenous dress hanging from its ceiling. There’s a butchers too, with its own ceiling display: meat, red and raw, hanging from hooks. At the other end, by my house, a new addition has come: a mobile phone shop, selling the latest handsets, and with a computer and printer for hire inside.And in the front of these shops, are the baskets of fruits and vegetables, open for one’s perusal. Buying food is a picky business here; much attention is paid to the quality of each piece, and I – on several occasions – have been refused permission to buy something by my colleagues, despite seemingly adequate appearances, as the item in question has been deemed ‘not good’.Their sellers sit behind, often in groups or two or three. There are Chakma women together, Marma women, a smattering of men and children, indigenous and Bengali, throughout. And I, as a by-now familiar bideshi, wander through, chatting here, being chatted about there. My interactions with the market-sellers are some of my favourites: the discussions about the best ways to cook unknown items, which fruits are‘sweet’ today, the conversations about my dress, my country, and – when I’ve been absent from the market for a week or two - where I have been. The mixing of different languages, and the cups of tea with my Marma ‘didi’, who forcibly drags me into a nearby tea-stall, and gives me treatsfrom her vegetable selection, refusing my offers of payment.I also love the times, like today, when the interactions are minimal. Not because I don’t like being social, although, to be honest, there are times when I appreciate the quiet. But because, I like the familiarity of it all, and – even more - I like my own familiarity to those around me. Walking back after work, and being just another customer: weaving my way amongst the crowdsand the puddles and the motorbikes and the electric tuk-tuks, choosing vegetables, greeting the people I know, smiling at familiar faces, and making my way home to cook my dinner, just like everyone else.Some stares will always there, of course. And being conspicuous may even have its benefits at times. But sometimes, the best feeling is a sense of blending in, and of just being another face in the market crowds.