The Vegetable Market

The vegetable market is a place where the ladies of the house galore and have their time in buying the required vegetables for the house hold and thus keep their hegemony on their homes. The way to the market is well defined and the time is always in the evening. As a matter of course, the women get themselves ready and go for the ritual by themselves if their husbands are at work, or sons are away etc. But those who can get their spouses to accompany them are more happy as they can be used to carry the bought out stuff and also to work as the moving ATM.

The husbands who have not gone for this ritual usually escape the monotony of waiting for their wives at the shop door or move with ther women while the women select the required items. Many shop keepers have sensed this prejudice of women in selecting the best of the vegetables presented and allow them into the shop to do their selection! Those shopkeepers who do not like women come inside the shop and select their vegetables are consiidered rude and women usually despise such shops. Their pretext have been very right in the sense their husbands have later found out to their diismay that the vegetables which were so lovingly and quickly bought turned out to be rotten and only half of the purchased item were usefull.

One of those days, Ramu set out with his wife for the normal custom of getting vegetables. The shop was four kilometres away and a small bus ride took them to the dustry market agog with the hustle and bustle of vegetable sellers, the regular vegetable shops, grocery shops, the fish sellers and all other kinds of every day ware. The time and place is a good time spend for any one having not much other work. But the dust and cheeck by jowl vehicles of all sorts make it very uninteresting these days as Ramu soon found out.

Since the ritual has to be somehow performed he moved with his wife with then obedient stature of a good husband and the lady entered the shop. At the entry, she handed over the bags to Ramu and went in. Ramu simply followed her with the express intention of helping out. The first item to be purchased was the 'french beens' which is an item for the usual 'thoran' or side vegetable dish. She checked each been with the alacrity of an engineer inspecting his plans for a new building. In a matter of fifteen minutes the selection was over and she moved to the next item, the tomatoes. Tomatoes these days can't be simply relied upon. The heap will have both good and rotten, the ripe and over ripe as well as the non performing stiff ones. In another half an hour most of the fruits were inspected and half a kilogram of the stuff was collected. The next items was the underground yam which in any case has to be inspected only by sight as these are huge lumps from which as much is cut out and weighed. If the yam is good the colour will be white and if it is not that good, the colour will be reddish. Here the colour was white which made the selection easier. In an hours's time the selection was over and Ramu was pulling out the cash for the bill, when his wife suddenly found another item for the house hold, namely, the 'bhindies' (the ladies finger).

That was the last item but Ramu was at his wits end. Bhindies are a love with all cautious ladies shopping. The modus operandi is checking most of the bhindies in the lot by pressing each one of them and slighting breaking a little part at the end of the bhindi. The young bhindies will break instantaneously where as the older ones will not break that easily and are naturally discarded. This exercise usually took some time, even though, the shopping ladies usually took it as routine. The shop keepers, meaning, the good shop keepers, never complained as they knew it these women who brought business to them and kept it running in good form. If one looked only for men folk shopping much of his ware won't be sold as men coming to buy vegetables are few and far between in India. But not so with ladies. If there is a house hold there is a lady and if there is a lady, she will shop for vegetables which is her prerogative. With husband or without, they will shop for vegetables. If the husband is available he will come for accompaniment and helping out and will be generally harmless.

Ramu thought of the good old times when he used to go for the market and buy his whole lot of vegetables in half an hours time and ”Where are you lost, don't we have to move for groceries and fish?” He mumbled “oh..oh...” and moved with her to the next shop carrying a bag of vegetables. On the way, there was the knick knack vendor where his wife mumbled in his ear, “just a minute”..and was simply lost in selection of little knick knacks from a hair pin to hair band to so many other little things .... thise is can take quite some time.....Now Ramu has stopped thinking and was at solemn ease.. The has ended for Ramu as it will be still later they completed their whole urchase for the day....and he decided “So be it”