Crawford Market

On my day off this week I wandered around downtown, a little north of where I have been before. I went to Crawford Market, a big bazaar in the city.

I got off the train and started walking east, the general direction of the market. The map I had wasn’t very good, but I was pretty sure that I needed to walk down one major street until I got to another major street, and follow that to a third major street, and there it would be. The problem with that plan is that the major streets that are on my map and the smaller streets that are not on my map actually look quite similar when you are at street level. I wandered here and there, generally heading east, but with no idea if the market was north or south of where I was. I wanted to hide in a corner and surreptitiously look at my map, so that I could pretend that I knew what I was doing and where I was going, but there was no corner to be had. In the bazaar part of town, there are lots of people everywhere crowding down the streets. There were masses of people choking the narrow roads and sitting on stoops and every street was lined with dozens of shops with customers milling around, and there were rows of carts in front of the shops selling clothes and housewares and it was so hot and sunny. Finally, giving up my search for shelter from the masses and the sun, I just stood on a corner in plain view of several hundred people (who honestly didn’t care what I was doing) and pulled out my map.

I am not sure what I was thinking, imagining that the map would help. The map had 3-4 lines on it, with a few street names. I was on a street corner, trapped in a labrynthine set of lanes and alleys and streets and roads and walkways with no names on anything whatsoever and David Bowie (as seen in the movie “Labrynth”) dancing around my head mocking me. The names that I was able to see from where I was were all the names of intersections (the intersections, or chowks, get their own names here.) which didn’t help me because that information was not on my map. I shoved the stupid, paltry little map back into my bag.

I scanned around for a shopkeeper who seemed likely to speak English. I realized that I don’t know what someone who speaks English looks like. I scanned around for the closest shopkeeper instead, and asked where Crawford Market was. Luckily, the closest shopkeeper spoke English. Two minutes, that way. The direction I had been headed in. Sweet.

I kept walking and a big intersection opened up out of nowhere with Crawford Market at the other end. It was weird, I had just been in this maze of streets and alleys, a jungle of concrete. I could have wandered for hours and not seen this big thing that was just on the other side of a row of buildings.

Crawford was at first overwhelming. As I walked over to the actual building, one tout kept shoving his place mats in my face trying to get me to buy them. Seriously, he followed me for 5 minutes. Finally I looked at him and said, buddy, I am really not buying any of your placemats. I am not sure what it was about my tone or look, but that got rid of him. He really wanted me to buy some placemats though, and really thought that I would. I wonder why.