Looking for Azadpur Mandi Market

Last Saturday, Ksitiz tell us to visit some markets within the framework of our studies. So the one Marie and me had to visit was the vegetable market called “Azadpur Mandi Market”. The aim was to make a kind of discovery report about people behaviour and what they could tell us about themselves and the market as well. In all sincerity, I think that this getaway has been a failure and a success as well. Faillure: We are still not able to say if the market we found was the real Azadpur Mandi. Success: This enabled us to meet lot of people and also to learn how to communicate without been stopped by the language barrier.

On the eve, everything was ready. We checked the right place on Google map. Than we decided to use the metro in order go to “Adarsh Nagar” metro station. Given that the size of the entire market, we though it cannot be missed. The matter was that once we came at Adarsh Nagar metro station, the place was not what we expected. It was an avenue between a very poor place and another one with lot of seller. Then effectively, there was a vegetable market along the avenue. Something like less than one hundred meters long but didn’t look like what we expected. Marie and I was sceptical, but it was equally important to do things right.

So first technic was ineffective. That is to say that for all people we met at there, no one ever saw white people in their life. Everybody was staring at us and following us in the street. Even if we wanted to be unnoticed, it was definitely impossible in here. We walk to a vegetable stand and all people was stopping talking to each other to wait what we was about to say. Beyond that, we tried to watch from a distance Indian talking to each other (Of course, in Hindi). We noticed something different from France; actually, buyer use to consume what they buy at the place they bought it. In France, you go buying something then go. For example, nobody eat French croissant at the boulangerie. People buy it, then eat it in their house or alone in the street. It is not the first time I see this, It might be common in Asia.

Then the second technic was ineffective too. Because in the place we were absolutely nobody was speaking English. So no way to understand or beeing understood. Nevertheless, we came to the vegetable sellers and trying to initiate exchanges but it was a big dialogue of the deaf. We tried some sentences like “you, seller? Or farmer?” or “Where from”, with lot of gesture as well, but to no avail.

Then we though that, obviously, we wasn’t in the right market. Probably there is another bigger one market somewhere around. So Marie and I got deeper in the streets, trying to find the right one. We asked to lot of passers for directions, using simple world like “Azadpur Mandi Market” our “Vegetable market”. Everyone was saying something different. We didn’t know if they wanted us to go to the merchants they know or if they simply didn’t know where it is. But we still walked approximately one kilometres from the metro station, asked to a lot of Indian passer but nothing to see with the eyes or with the camera.

By the way, we will notice that the article have no photo. It may be stupid but we didn’t wanted to turn attention to us (more that it was already) with our big camera. But anyway, all the neighbourhood was already aware that two white people was looking for a market in the street.

In fact, this experience was not really expected in our plan. In first we felt a little bit disappointed to not have to find the market, but by this way, the surprises given to us by the life in Delhi, give us some meetings, a new way of interactions between people does not speak the same language, and from opposites cultures. To get lost in Delhi allow us to discover inhabitants in front of their houses, trying to help us to find the way of this mysterious “Azaspur Mandi”. We learned about communications by signs and simple words, just exchanging regards and eyes-contact. We were fascinated by the street-market activities in the poor city. We do not found the famous one market but we found a simple interaction between people and us does not scared by our curiosity, just trying in the both ways to understand what each other is meaning. As I could read once in the traditional “Lonely planet”, the first experience in Delhi, the first thing to do, is to get lost. It was the perfect opportunity to apply this rule without knowing