[Urbanstudy] Shani Bazaar,

[aasim khan]

Our research is to explore a specific weekly market
called Shani bazaar held at Shahpur Jat (opposite Hauz
Khas,Delhi) on every Saturday.it is part of the urban
study group student research program. We have begun
the process of mapping the area in both its physical
texture and psychological dimensions. 

We were running late and of course it was a shanichar.
The bazaar was at its peak at around 6:45 pm. The
narrow lane between the Panchsheel residential area
and the Shahpur Jat was teeming with people literally
bursting out of its seams and spilling into the road
on either side. The men wearing strait normal shirts
in lighter colours and polyester trousers with dusty
chappals walked hand in hand and cracked sly jokes. A
section of the bazaar ran alongside a rocky wall of
the historic Siri Fort, which is also the southern
boundary of the village. The wall is a sort of
entropic barrier separating chaos from organization!
At the beginning is the vegetable market. In contrast
with the neighbouring elite Hauz Khas, where shops are
flooded with exotic varieties of veggies (till
recently known only to visa holders!), Shahpur Jat
provides a visual feast of the everyday varieties in
abundance. One finds mounds of vegetables – the
freshest of their lot, with the distinct aroma of
coriander as one bends to pick up a bunch, glossy
eggplants symmetrically arranged, fresh spinach and
other saag such as bathua and chulayi in different
colours, smiling faces of cauliflowers.smiling faces
of people buying smiling cauliflowers! People in
motion; people’s commotion


Adjacent to these are the durables (though one can
seriously doubt their durability).  Cell-phone shaped
pencil boxes, key chains with heart shaped stones for
the love lorn youngsters in the crowd, metallic,
semi-metallic, plastics, semi plastic - all outsourced
from the grand whole sale market of Delhi’s Sadar
Bazaar. On moving ahead one finds the largest stalls
of Shani Bazaar selling utensils, which bounce off the
afternoon sun’s rays in tinselled spectrums that hurt
one’s eyes. One can make an elaborate kitchen from
these as here you can find everything from bowls to
whippers or madhanis. Still on the jaunt, the
excitement builds up as you try to follow arguments of
bunched up women haggling for petticoats and blouses
in bold solid colours and they complain about ill –
fitting maxi sizes like anywhere else. Brassieres –
mostly white or red, arranged conically. One only
finds middle aged women as buyers and always a casual
male seller. Young girls dare walk up to buy these on
their own. Even if they do feel they need one, until
their mum feels they do, they cannot sport one like
their other school friends. And I guess since the
mothers come to shop, the shop keeper pulls out the
most ugly, prudish ones, literally thick white
chastity guards – no push ups or bawdy nets or the
nasty thin straps. Trinkets and bindi sellers on
thelas attract the younger crowd of girls who come
there after a long day. Just after school they have to
first wash utensils or clothes in the neighbouring
Asiad Village flats before they can come here to meet
their ‘justfriends’ and ‘boyfriends’.  The baloonwalas
and sellers of pani puri and khasta garam kachaori
buzzing on bicycles, children’s clothes, local
publications with durga chalisa and shiva vandana to
the erotic mantras in Mastram’s publications picturing
a semi nude couple in a sultry half embrace, shayiri
and poetry books, books on how to write love letters,
on cosmetic recipies aping their snobbish counterparts
sold at hauz khas  etc. – an eclectic mix of interests
for the spiritual and hedonistic alike. And
occasionally boys in pairs would come and gingerly
pick up the irrepressible Mastram  with corny twists
to their mouths, delve into the secrets of good sex
and whiz by laughing
 

As we passed by no methodological questions passed our
minds. We were like any other cupple holding hands and
enjoying the evening as the sun was setting on the
dust borne chaos of the bazaar. But we were also
vigourous eavesdroppers(SARAI pays us for that...) and
voyeurs to peoples evening out. We were contemplating
on how to start a conversation with someone .  Soon
the gol gappa wala – Firaye Lal and a hojry/fancy
goodsman - Raju were in conversation with us. After
pretending to be interested in what they were selling
we began probing. We shot out most of the doubts we
ever had about how these guys were here, doing what
they were doing. Is the bazaar their main source of
income? Do they sell at other such bazaars at Delhi?
Where do they live and where are they from? Are they
tenants and do they live with their families? For some
the bazaar provides supplementary income along with
what their shops sell. For others, the bazaar gives
livelihood especially to migrants from UP and Bihar.
Who are they and what are their roots? Could they have
been landless labourers in their villages, who came to
the city for better prospects? Maybe they owned a
piece of land back home, which was being tilled by a
brother, and they supplemented the income by coming to
Delhi and managing their family here. They both live
in Khanpur,Mayapuri,Mainpuri,Nangloyee.. and many
others are tenants in the old chaupal of the
ShahpurJats. So what is the game all about? What are
the exigencies and anxieties of making a living like
this? The bazaars like Shani on Saturday are held on
other days in other places of Delhi. Sunday is the day
marked for R.K. Puram. Others are held in Maya Puri,
Mayur Vihar, Saket, Seelampur etc. Obtaining a right
place in these bazaars in essential.Mobility is
everything. One pays around Rs. 20/- for the transport
of goods, the collectors in Shani are the Jat Pradhans
in tandem with the local Thulla  – they take away
around Rs. 40 to 50. They carry their stuff on thelas
or kiraya ke auto richshaws to these different bazaar
hotspots. In other bazaars the focal point of power is
the MCD officials who take this amount as rent for the
space. Hence, the hosiery man deftly stresses that one
ends up paying approximately a hundred rupees for each
shift and seeing the grim look on our faces the
excitable golgappa wendor friend drops in a truism – “
garib ki to har jagah hi maar hai!” and grins
satisfactorily. By the end of the conversation they
both are at loggerheads for usurping each other’s
chances to speak and soon their raillery at each other
turns sour with parochial abuses and we realize that
its time to quell it by moving on. 

We were alerted to something fishy in the entire
conversation. Apparently the Shani Bazaar has a lot of
of pangas.Though in this chaos your bodily integrity
is at stake even when you are standing on its
periphery. Violence is not uncommon here and erupts
before the egos reach boiling point. Then they just
hushed but muttered something about disagreements. So
does the bazaar carry with it the characteristic wrath
of its astrological counterpart Lord Shani? It is now
clear that it exists in the liminal space between the
trench lines of the ‘legal’ and the ‘illegal’. Most
often the upholders of the law nestle in with these
vendors by locating their own lucrative soft spots,
but occasionally they wield their tempers on them with
either fines or confiscation of their goods. So behind
the daily planning that the vendor does in his bed
each night before, there hangs a sense of anxiety and
arbitrariness as well. Probably our friends here are
unlisted in the Governments priorities. The
economist’s discussion on the ever-widening
middleclass is useless for them because no one will
come to assess their income in surveys. Their
invisibility as citizens of India makes their freedom
ironic...yet doesn’t hurt their dhandha.Like the
bombaiyyah would say;Ganda hai par dhandha hai yeh.. 

The mobility in their so-called ‘unplanned’ existence
can be a source of anxiety. This freedom is often lost
as fast as it comes to them when thullas intervene in
any of their fights. Next time we shall probably ask
them whether they carry voter id cards and ration
cards
or maybe not!

So no grand truths were uncovered during the trip to
the field. What we came back with was a lot of fun and
a few story lines like good scriptwriters. But we
found satisfaction in merely uncovering the delightful
ideas and social tactics and antics hidden behind the
chaos of the market. The questions that still remained
in our minds were crucial and will probably guide our
next probe. We plan to do a pilgrimage to the mecca of
tactical trade-SADAR BAZAAR. The networks are dense

yet not rigid. 

One can ask whether there was a centralizing identity
that defines the vast breathing consciousness of the
market or is it infact a sight of many pulsating
identities? We are feeling a great sense of
responsibility(huh!) as we bring the truths of the
people we spoke to into the periphery less and exposed
domain of the urban studies group. Even though we are
anxious to constantly substantiate and validate our
stories we understand the sheer constraints of
positivistic classifications and data collection.
Hence we steered clear of neo-classical economics to
study Shani bazaar. Firayelal, the golgappa wala was
not the ECONOMICS man – cold, neutral and heartless
when we met him. He did not sell pani puri as an
exercise in the rationality of perfect profit
maximization.Or did he?  he never calculates any
cumulative growth in any logbook though he too
definitely has days of good sales. And we think that
many buyers here come with the willingness of being
cheated. Some happen to value relations more than
discounts.

 It’s the same as what Shweta’s favourite professor
Avijit Pathak tells us about his trips to Sarojini
Nagar. On not being able to go home (to Bengal) for
Durga pooja, he visits a lane selling pooja goods at
Sarojini. Despite the fact that all shops sold similar
goods at bargain able prices, he somehow defies
economics and lands up at the one which is decorated
in a typical pooja way and the shopkeeper creates
nostalgia in his heart as he welcomes him in his
familiar Bengali dialect. So coming back to Shani
bazaar, we guess its economics and anthropology are as
fascinating as a fairy myth and we shall try to define
our effort in Prof. Pathak’s words – “ the method as
an aesthetic process of perpetual refinement.”

The key words :
trench lines of the ‘legal’ and the ‘illegal’
willingness of being cheated
many pulsating identities
tactical trade
The networks are dense 
yet not rigid. 

In the next posting look out for some economic talk as
we discuss mobility, access and of course freedom to
trade  as development.


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