Gurugramwale: The bazaar shop anthropology

Cracking the vibes of an intense market through its perfectly localised store.

One way of experiencing a market as crowded and atmospheric as Gurugram’s Sadar Bazaar is by walking through its many streets and lanes, listening to the blab of the shoppers, the cries of the hawkers, and taking in the chaos as entertainingly as you would watch a multi-starrer masala Bollywood entertainer.

Or, you can sit in one of the shops and absorb the impressions a bit more studiously. Say, Jain Bartan Store, a small roadside lean-to selling household kitchen utensils. The ceiling clings to the remnants of a ruined haveli. The shops look so ordinary that only people in urgent need of Miss Mary, a popular pressure cooker, might care to step inside. But the shop is a monument by Millennium City standards where everything seems to have come up around the turn of the century.

It was set up 50 years ago.

“My father, late Sheetal Prasad Jain, founded it,” says shopkeeper Nirdesh Jain, 42. The friendly man explains that his family hails from Hansi town and that his grandfather moved to Gurugram “many many years ago”, when he got a clerical job in the city’s civil court.

But now a customer enters and Mr Jain no longer has the leisure to expound on his shop’s history. It doesn’t matter—you should enjoy your time here to observe the shoppers: Each person is like a short story, with all sorts of troubles and anxieties as they look for frying pans and ladles. One lady is confused. Should she buy steel plates or the ones in plastic? Another has a “pooja party” at her home the following day, and needs new crockery (though her budget is “very tight”).

Mr Jain is amenable to give concessions. A young man has eyes on three thermos flasks but he can’t pay in full “because I need to save Rs 50 to return home.” The shopkeeper closes his eyes, appears to be in some dilemma and then his facial expressions relaxes, as if he had reached a conclusion. He lets the buyer go away with a good deal.

Now enters a lady who begins to passionately discuss the problem of school admission for her children.

This procession of people marching in to buy kitchen crockery do not give away the secrets of their lives, but observing them does give a glimpse of their domestic familiarity. And later on, as you’re walking the bazaar again, each face in the crowd seems to reveal a little bit more of its inner self. The market feels more intimate.

The shop is open from 10.30am to 8.30pm, Sunday closed.