There is one thing about India that is really different. Different compared to both Germany and the U.S. If you want to get your groceries in the U.S., then you just go to T*a*e* J*e’* or to G*a*t E*g*e and maybe to T*r*e* for some special items (similarly in Germany with other stores). Once you have been to all of the above you will be all set for a week for sure. With everything. With groceries, cleaning supplies, hygienic stuff or whatever else you need to survive. AND you know upfront, that you will indeed get (almost) everything. This is not the case in India. Here, you go to a ‘market’. These may be called “DDA-Market” or “C-Block-Market” or something like that. But if you imagine any kind of supermarket or a big store, you are completely wrong. Such a “market” is more like a place with a lot of different really tiny little shops. What kind of shops? This is not necessarily obvious. You have to find out.
The combination of shops is always different. In some markets, some shops will provide food, others kitchen or household supplies (very rarely, if ever, together in one shop), some of them just sell fruit or just vegetables, or just dairy like milk, cheese and yoghurt. But sometimes, a market can also be just an accumulation of various hardware shops. This formation would then be the H*m* D*p*t of India.
Every of these “markets” has its own combination, its own structure, and one has to know exactly what to find where. Trying to find this out can be extremely interesting and exciting. But it also takes a lot of time. You may have to check out each and every shop. To get everything for the week, you will have to hop from one little shop to another. And that can take a while.
It is also possible that though you cannot see a particular item in a given shop, they will have it anyway. Having an orderly arrangement is neither common nor, apparently, perceived as required. Furthermore, these shops are all very small and it is not easy to have all these things arranged nicely and orderly. Just to have an idea: those shops often have the size of a small bathroom, perhaps the size of a casual corner store. Not bigger. Even fancier shops are not bigger or better arranged. They just have more stuff.
Recently, I went to a somewhat trendier household supply store. All the different items were piled up, way up to the ceiling. There were just two small pathways through the store. Passing another person in fact turned into a kind of teambuilding exercise (regardless of whether or not you would want to form a team with the other customers). LOL!
At any rate, in this shop, I kept asking for this and that. Amazingly, I never got a ‘no’ for an answer. It was always: “Just a second!” Right away someone started to rummage in the piles and somewhere out of any secret hiding place he got what I had asked for. That was not too difficult for me in that particular shop, because the staff were able to understand and speak English. In contrast, it is still kind of challenging for me to find what I am looking for in a small shop around the corner. My Hindi, let’s put it this way, leaves a lot of room for improvement. Sometimes it is really exhausting to hop from shop to shop trying to use gestures and pantomime to get all the things I am looking for. In such moments, I miss my good old German or American stores, where I can rush through with my shopping cart and after 20-30 minutes I have everything I came for.
If you are far away from home, you appreciate the things that you do not see as special because they seem so ordinary to you. At any rate, you might not see those things at anything special.
So if next time you go shopping, you may take a moment to appreciate how easy your shopping experience is (if you are not in India and have this excitement anyway). And if you want a taste of what shopping here is like, pay a visit to your local Indian or Middle Eastern supermarket. Often, they are much more crammed than an ordinary supermarket. And who knows, perhaps you will find that occasionally, checking out the various things that are tucked and hidden away in various corners can be quite interesting!
For today I say goodbye with a warmest „Namaste“!
Adventures in India - Sabrinas Indienblog 