I, Pencil; Ravivari Market / Chor Bazaar
Thought for the post is actually a short story… one of my favorites. It’s almost 50 years old but it holds up incredibly well… It is about Mongol 482’s life. Mongol 482 is an Eberhard Faber (now Faber-Castell, atleast in the US) pencil. Mongol talks about the complexity of his components and the numerous people required to make him. It’s actually a really good introduction to economics.
Read it: I, Pencil. My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read
Ravivari Bazaar (Chor Bazaar)
This occurred a couple of months ago (pre-typhoid and first trip to Bombay)… I went to help my friend look for a used bike at this place called Ravivari Bazaar (Sunday market) or alternately, Chor Bazaar (Thieves’ market), under Ellisbridge on the old city side of Ahmedabad… I think every city in India has a Chor Bazaar (like Flea Markets). The Bombay one has gotten really famous and is now quite a tourist destination… some vendors even accept credit cards there. No such thing in Ahmedabad, but it’s a place where you can get ANYTHING… OK, not anything but you can come out of there with a totally random grouping of crap, and you have to bargain hard, or you will be fleeced (it’s called the thieves market for a reason).
It reminded me a lot of the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, China, which is a place to buy anything and everything made in China (Cars, large machinery, every kind of electronic item you can imagine, etc), but only if you can purchase it by the container-load… Here’s a picture of 1/2 of the Canton Fair Buildings… they are building more - it’s absolutely ridiculous:
Here’s the interior of probably 1% of ONE of the buildings.
You might not get the sense that Chor Bazaar and the Canton Fair are similar based on these pictures, but having been at Canton last year, I totally felt like Chor Bazaar was a scaled down poor consumer version of Canton.
So at Ravivari Bazaar, you can purchase a bunch of odd things as well, like used antiques, slippers, scooter parts, old cellphones (Zack Morris style) used bikes, old magazines, new pushcarts, new bike parts, and GOATS:
There are a LOT of people, and there is a narrow entrance, and people are bringing all of their new belongings out… so it’s a little tough to get in, but well worth it
Here’s an overview shot of the place (this is near the end of the day, so a lot of the vendors had already left)
Pushcarts cost 2200 ($48) rupees each for a new one, and about half that for a used one… I wonder how long it takes the typical pushcart vendor (larri-wallah) to recoup that investment… There are all sorts of things that are sold on these - vegetables, Pirated DVD’s, half of the food that I eat, watches, pani-puri, toys, etc.
Thinking about the pushcart… The market for goods is just so large here… Just a few minutes ago I was eating a Dabeli (what I eat is in this previous post, including a Dabeli picture) made on one of the pushcarts. Incidentally, if you want to make your own Dabeli, you can learn how to at Bawarchi. The Dabeli was 6 rupees (15 cents)… When I ordered it the guy had 15 ready on the grille… By the time I finished eating it 5 minutes later, all of them were gone and he was starting a new batch… he did 90 rupees ($2) of business in 5 minutes. Some of these roadside guys do really well. I read an article in the Times of India (so reliability is questionable) that the Lucky Tea Stall (not roadside but hole-in-the-wall) in Lal Darwaja has a turnover of 40,000 rupees ($900) per day. I’ve been there… tea costs a few rupees, and they sell Tea with Muska bun (Bun and a lot of butter, GROSS) for 10 rupees if I remember correctly. They have an MF Husain painting hanging in their shop - apparently MF loves their Tea and gave it to them as a gift… I guess what I’m thinking about is that margins can be pretty low here when you have a ridiculous turnover.
Incidentally, I’ve also started cooking pretty frequently. My ingredients are pretty limited, I’m generally alone in the flat and I don’t cook that often so I can’t buy anything that I can’t either use all at once or won’t spoil if I don’t touch it again for a week. I’ve burned rajma in the pressure cooker 3 times now… It’s such a pain to clean! Anyway, I always burn the Rajma (I know, I know, more water) but I usually already have the chonk (the mix of spices and stuff) ready, so I end up making pulao, and I’ve actually become quite good at the Pulao (well I like it anyway). I also have made mung daal and poha. Bawarchi.com is a good site for recipes (but I just use the same chonk for everything so far, I don’t need recipes). I understand why we use frozen veggies in the US… Life would be so easy for me if I had some. Also life would be easy for me if I had some peanut butter and jelly.
Next week, I’m headed south, to Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bangalore (and villages in between). Let me know if you know of any Microfinance Institutions or any other people/places I should visit down there.
