Sunday, September 22, 2013

Well you know that it’s going to be alright, When we go shopping…


 Thanks to our good, close, personal friends Bare Naked Ladies for the musical intro to this week’s blog. It certainly sets the proper theme.

In past entries to this blog we have discussed the upper end of the shopping experience in New Delhi – modern shopping malls. This tip of the shopping experience is not the common one for most Indians, day to day. First, as huge as cities like New Delhi and Mumbai are, most Indians still live in smaller towns, or even a rural existence. For them, there is nothing like a mall. For these Indians and even for most who live in the cities shopping most often occurs in small shops, sometimes clustered in shopping areas or markets. We often do our grocery shopping in such a market and occasionally we will shop there for more significant purchases.

Rae is getting ready to head back to the US for a month of Nana duty and we wanted to pick up a few things, Indianish things, before she leaves. We thought we would have better luck finding them at the more traditional shopping area than at the mall, so we headed to Lajpat Nagar central market.
Many shopping areas consist of a few stalls or storefronts clustered around a central plaza or square. There are usually a variety of shops and “eating joints” (as the locals call them). That is a more accurate term than “restaurant”. Lajpat Nagar central market is such a shopping area, writ large.

Lajpat Nagar was originally a swamp area without much to recommend it. For that reason, no one seemed to mind when refugees from Punjab, relocated to Delhi after the partition of Indian and Pakistan in 1947. Well, what started as a refugee camp, then neighborhood, south of New Delhi continued to grow and expand. It is now in the heart of South Delhi and expanded from one area to four. The central market is in Lajpat Nagar III; my campus and the Church are in Lajpat Nagar IV. I don’t know for sure how many hundreds of thousands people live in this area that is probably no more than a couple of square miles, it is very densely populated area and the central market has expanded along with it to a core area of a few blocks, with new shops radiating out from along the access roads.

Shopping at Lajpat Nagar central market gives a more traditional experience than at the mall but there are a couple of downsides. A) The shops are rarely cooled and of course it’s not covered so it is much hotter; and 2) There are no beggars at the mall and there are always a few at the market. I really have a hard time with beggars, particularly the little kids or mothers with little kids. No matter how often I interact with them, this just does not get any easier. Not all beggars are women and children. In this picture, if you look closely in the center frame, you will see a man lying on a low trolley, scooting through the crowd.



Well, having laid the overall foundation, I will leave it to Rae to build the rest of the house. Here’s Rae….

Hi all,

I’ve been wanting to go spend some time at Lajpat Nagar market, as we drive by it all the time on our way to Phil’s work or our Branch.  We’ve been there very briefly a couple of times, I think I talked about going to the paint store; that was in this market area.  The previous visits were not that pleasant because it was so hot and humid and AC is not all that common [Phil – even fans are not all that common].  Some of the stores are enclosed with actual doors and so they might be the ones with AC, but a lot of them are open stalls and so whatever the outside temperature is that’s the temperature you get.  

If you picture shopping, I’m sure you picture going into the store and wondering around looking at things you might be interested in.  That is not how you shop at these markets.  While most of the stores are little more than formalized stalls, the larger stores are very narrow, fairly deep and usually 2 or three stories. Stairs to the additional floors are usually located at the back of the store. Items are not normally out for you to look at, but rather they are folded and stored on shelves that usually go from floor to ceiling. The ceilings are probably 12 to 15 feet high.  There are usually counters that run the length of the store and are probably about 18-24 out from the shelves with a narrow corridor down the middle for the customer to move. 

There are usually a lot of clerks behind the counters and the space for them to move past each other is limited so they work as a team to get things from the shelves.  Sometimes there are stools, benches, or chairs to sit at so that you can be shown the merchandise.  They will ask you what you are wanting, and assuming they understand what it is you are saying, they begin to remove items from the shelves, then from their wrappings and then begin displaying them, ( they also do this with items that aren’t what you’ve asked for).  There is always someone whose job it is to refold and repackage the items, so displaying MANY items never seems to be an issue.  We happened to be shopping for some clothing items, and I know if I’d had access to the shelves I could have ruled out a lot of items before they bothered to unwrap and display them.  I guess if I streamlined the process there wouldn’t be a need for so much cheap labor.  It was interesting to see the clerks sit on the counter, swing their legs over and repeat the process in reverse to get items from the other side of the store.  It was either that or have clerks from the other side throw items over to them.  It took going to a few different stores to find the items we were wanting.  In almost every store there seemed to be a tailor to make immediate alterations to an item.  We in fact had a tailor add sleeves to an item, and shorten sleeves on another.  An interesting thing about tops that come with no sleeves, there are sleeves included so they can be added if wanted.  I don’t want to say much more about what we purchased, because I want them to be a bit of a surprise for the family.  Later I hope to have pictures to post.

Shopping was still pretty warm and I found myself pretty sweaty, but overall, it was a fun adventure and I’m glad it was a bit cooler so we could go.  While we were in one of the stores having a mountain of merchandise displayed, there was a big rain storm going on outside and so that’s why it looks dark and rainy in the pictures.  A lot of the open air stalls seem to be prepared for such things, and almost magically items are somehow protected from the downpour and business continues.  There may be a few tables or displays that don’t get covered, but it seemed to me to be very few. Here are a few more pictures.





Here’s a funny thing that may give you an idea of how different our perception about the weather is from those native to Delhi. I’ve become friends on Facebook with one of the young women I met at camp. (Her father was our District President for quite a few years prior to our current one.)  She just posted on Facebook how much she was enjoying the “chilly” weather now, huh?  I worry a bit about her, because she is going to BYU in January. If 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity is "chilly" what is she going to do in a Provo winter? Anyway, I thought it was pretty funny.  


Namaste.

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