Fresh stuff

There are still a great deal of people who do not believe in stocking up on vegetables, but would rather buy them from day to day, or at least every other day. The vegetables are fresh and there is a belief that these have been spared any preservatives that the chains would soak their stocks in. That may be debatable. Each of these pavement vegetable vendors has to exhaust their stock at the end of the day, so the chance of vegetables rotting because the freezer was turned off at night (the store manager says he is under pressure to reduce power consumption in the store!) are nil.

This was once the default mode of buying vegetables anywhere in Madras. Today, most localities have one of the chain stores catering to the residents. Markets like these have been in retreat for a while, with just a few bastions clinging on. In fact, a more organized vegetable market at Thaneer Thurai, not very far from this one, has given way to a commercial complex. These vendors survive because they don't have any infrastructure - they can set up a stall by the roadside and start their chorus of extolling the vegetables' virtures. 

You could argue that such fragmented sellers will not give you the choice that comes from walking through the aisles of a large store. But hey, forget about an aisle, you have a whole street here to choose from!

Fresh vegetables

This is a sight that's getting rarer by the day. Madras had large spaces for markets like these, dotting every part of the city. They were all built over 50 years ago and some are almost 100 years old. The Thaneer Thurai market is somewhere in between, and would fall somewhere into the 'medium-size' category for such markets. They're the last-but-one link in the traditional chain of getting vegetables from field to table within a day. (The last link? That's here!).


But such spaces in the middle of the city's commercial areas are too valuable to be left to such markets; many of them have given way to shopping malls or to multi-storied buildings. Roughly 40,000 sqft of space in the middle of Mylapore would send any property developer's heart pumping, so it is a wonder this market still survives.


Not for long, apparently. Many of the stalls in the Thaneer Thurai market are empty, having been vacated by legal proceedings. It is said that the space has been bought up by a large retail store and once they manage to have all the remaining vegetable vendors evicted, it will be curtains for the market!

Retail sales

There are still a few streets in Chennai that have more houses than flats. It is always a pleasure to go into such a street, because one gets to see sights that are unique today, but were commonplace a couple of decades ago. And when the street is a dead-end, it makes for some added excitement - because you know you don't have the excuse of 'passing through'!

Early last morning, I went into one such street in Abhiramapuram. Okay, the excitement was slightly lower, because I had a good reason to be there. It was nice to see that the practice of washing the space in front of the gates and tracing 'kolams' in them still continues - that's something one can't get to see in front of a flat. And because it had rained a bit during the night, the street had a misty feel to it, the fresh mist that foretells a crisp day.

And then I saw this colourful sight. These tricycles have almost disappeared with the advent of all the big, corporatised retail stores. They are the last link in a chain that has connected farmer to consumer, getting the vegetables from the field to the table within 24 hours more often than not. Unlike the big stores, this chain does not have any fancy infrastructure or management overheads; no storage facilities or refrigerated trucks. It runs on links that fragment the produce at every stage, making sure that there is no need to carry inventory. And it works because there are still many wives and mothers who do not believe in storing vegetables in their freezers - they want them fresh, every day. And these tricyles bring such vegetables right to the gates, dispensing of 250g of tomatoes, a 100g of beans - just enough for a household to be fed that day. And these retail specialists probably know much more about their customers' preferences than any store manager can find out from his databases!