The Minimalists and the Outsider

by Salil Konkar

The Wednesday market in Siolim – noisy, colourful, crowded, even if it’s tiny in size compared to the Friday market in Mapusa. It starts at 7 in the morning every Wednesday and by 10 the show is over. Milan likened this ephemeral existence to the Cinderella story, my own thoughts weren’t too different – it seemed like a play that performs once a week – the stage is set, the performers troop in, the onlookers gather around – some even participating in the play, and the action begins. All for three hours, after which the curtains come down, the artists pack up and leave and everyone is back to being what they were. The street on which the market just happened returns to its original state, as if nothing had happened at all.

So what do they sell at this market, and who are these people who sell such myriad stuff in such unbelievably small quantities? Small packets of seeds, a handful of sweet potatoes and radishes, a dozen raw mangoes, a few coconuts – it seemed as if they were just selling extra stuff that they couldn’t use in their own homes, and it certainly didn’t look like they were growing vegetables for business. I decided to buy some ‘padwal’ and asked the woman selling it to give me a quarter kilo, only to be informed by a kindly gentleman who was also buying from her that things were not sold by weight, just counted and sold according to how much money was being paid. So I changed by request to 20 rupees worth of ‘padwal’; a cursory glance at other stalls told me that the gentleman was quite right – none of the local vegetable vendors had any weighing scales or measures. Except the guy with the largest vegetable stall, who had ‘outsider’ written all over his face.

There used to be a joke doing the rounds when I was living in New Zealand – ‘Why don’t Indians do well in football? Because whenever they get a corner, they decide build a shop on it!’ This ‘outsider’ looked like he could fit the description of the immigrant Indian in the joke; never miss an opportunity to make money where one exists, even if it’s only once a week for 3 hours, at the risk of having to put up with the condescending attitude of the local vendors. To his credit, he seemed to be doing really well; business was brisk and the turnover rapid. And it looked like most buyers didn’t care that he was not a local, after all how different could a vegetable from Belgaum be to one home-grown in the village?

Who else? A potter, a butcher and a bhajiya seller. The potter by her own admission comes to the market every week without any expectations of making a sale, more out of habit and to continue maintaining her space in the market than anything else. Any sale would probably be considered a bonus. Sure enough, for the hour that we were there, I didn’t see anyone even venture near her, leave alone buy any of the beautiful clay pots and urns she was selling.

The bhajiya seller had strategically positioned himself right in the middle of the small market, and from the looks of it, was doing good business.

The butcher was chopping away furiously at large slabs of meat in a makeshift tent from where he operated, as if his life depended on it (maybe it did too).

So many different things being sold in so small a market, for such short a time. There was even a stall selling combs, cheap toys and other ‘novelty items’. As Milan found out after some questioning, for most of the local vendors, this was the only market they would sell in; they didn’t feel the need to expand their business by selling at other places or in a regular daily market. Talk of being a minimalist, this way of working almost defied any logic for me, yet I found it admirable.