Sunday Market

On Sundays, a sprawling market comes to life in the morning along the banks of the Sabarmati River at the eastern foot of the Ellis Bridge. During the week, the area is a dusty, dirty place, interspersed with gypsy shacks and drying laundry. On Sunday, however, it transforms into a pulsing commerce center for the local community. Vendors offer an assortment of wares, from household necessities to used books and even to hard-to-find handcrafted tools.

Along the riverbank children fly their homemade kites while an old man dig into a pile of garbage. Others squat, ankle deep in the river, relieving themselves into the slowly flowing waters. A family of pigs scavenges the shoreline for anything edible. The smell of life hangs thick and acrid in the morning air. Vendors spread their plastic tarps in loosely organized sections, one area for household goods, another for furniture, another for used batteries and other junk. Dry dust rises and whirls in the increasing heat of the strong December sun.

Some of the goods for sale are new, but mostly they consist of previously owned and well-used items. Scattered about are a few antique dealers, selling things like old silver tea sets, utensils and serving tiffins (aluminum containers), all of a uniquely Indian design. The market offers such a variation of goods for sale that I begin to look at it as one large art installation. It seems that everything society consumes and throws away has been reclaimed for resale and reuse by others, recycling at it's most primitive.

The goods, besides the obvious antiques, are the results of a thorough search through the cities trash, combined with the incredible tenacity to precisely categorize what's found. The details of which are staggering; unbusted rubber bands, safety pins, push pins, glass bottles, spectacle lenses, circuit boards, nail polish, medicine tablets, beads and sequins. Broken items are repaired on site and sold. While this is an amazing site to us, it's simply the way of life for the people here. Everything is used to the very end, fixing and repairing until there is no further salvage possible.

The people who come to shop here are as diverse as the goods for sale. The down and out poor come to find the most basic necessities. Families come to purchase new furniture and household items. Others come to find specific, hard to find items, such as well-crafted old tools for woodworking and other professions. Collectors and artists hunt around for hours, searching for the rare and forgotten.

From what we were told, the market has been operating in the same spot for over a thousand years. While it's amazing to see what is displayed for sale today, it's interesting to think back to what might have been for sale then. Perhaps the basic household items haven't changed all that much in a thousand years here, as people still have need for a solid water pot, a religious deity, or a useful tool.