The tuesday fair

It was around two in the afternoon and I was pestering my cousin to accompany me to the village fair which is held every Tuesday. Being the Tuesday before Pongal this fair was going to be biggest in the year. People from all the small villages would come for their pongal shopping. We walked for about a kilometer (or more) to reach the fair grounds and I should say that the sun was quite kind to us given the usual state of the afternoons. The fair, without doubt, would surprise any first timer since it would be difficult not to find anything that people needed there and everything would be on 'footpath'. Luckily, I had a chance to film the spice of an Indian village.



Colors ... they were everwhere ... green, yellow, red, blue, orange, purple, and many more. The first stall I came accross was that of color powders for Pongal Rangoli. People were flooding the store and were kind enough to give me some room to film the stall. Most of the women in small villages go to work in the fields and hence, unlike their counterparts in the city, do not get a chance to put on make-up everyday. Come festivals and comes their chance to dress up gorgeous. They had a wide range of colorful bindis, talcum powders, hair clips, elastic bands, mirrors, bangles, necklaces, earrings, rings and a host of other stuff to choose from.

In India festivals and sweets are synonymous, so sweets were not left behind. Laddus, Jalebis, Peanut-jaggery bars, Sesame rolls, Araselu (a traditional south indian sweet made from rice flour and jaggery), Boorelu (another such sweet usually made of toor dal, and cocomut), and other sweets (whose composition I dare not explain)were selling off the stove. For the people who prefered spice to sweets there were pakodas, bajjis, hot mixture, vadas, chana, and roasted peanuts.



The lane to my left was the clothing section. All kinds of readymades were available ... shirts, trousers, lungis, dhotis, sarees, jeans !!! There was a tailor for those who preferred to get their clothes stiched instead. There was this mobile shop on a cycle (for dhotis) and on an autorickshaw (for sarees). If one got thirsty while shopping there were the chilled drinks, that we call Rasna (I'm not sure if Rasna is available these days). This again came in a gamut of colors but red was the clear favorite.

Regardless of how much I say the only way you can appreciate a rural Inidan market is by seeing it for yourself. And here is what I filmed.