SP road, Bangalore

I have this thing to go to market places. This one in the heart of the city, SP Road, is one of my favourite haunts. 

It is a market for nuts and bolts, wires and pipes, steel and copper, soldering irons and circuit boards, rivets, washers, I could go on..it's all raw. It is like a brain that has the raw energy to solve a problem, a pregnant space which is about create something. Markets like these are the real deal, its economics meets creativity meets sociology. 

For me its disney land. 

I also think it's one of the few places where I don't feel judged, for being a woman, for the way I look and what I do. Everyone on the street has only one purpose and i.e. Business. No one would go there for window shopping. No one would go there dressed to be seen. 

Everyone on the street will have specifications, rates,quantity and quality in their mind. It is a space of bargains and deals. 

I go there for work, but I also look for work to go there. I find solace in the quietude of nature and white noise of human chaos. Nature and human nature.

Back to the street...there is a rush on those streets, people walk with a pace that is not mechanical like the rush to enter a bus or the cars on the streets. It is a individual pace of purpose. And there are those people behind the counters of the shops, quiet serene, dead pan, unassuming. They know their stuff, and they are there to sell it

It's amazing how there will be one very bored looking guy standing at the counter of a shop selling bolts.  You tell him the specification,and he will turn around and go to one of the 500 different boxes and pick out the one you asked. And 500 is an understatement, there will be more in the loft, and the godown and their other shop and they will get you what you need..without a smile and without a fuss. They will guide you to the shop that has what you need and they will refuse to serve you if they can't. It's business and business only, but how wonderful to have that without all that marketing jazz. To sell what people need much like a sabji mandi. (There are some people who never need to know in their entire life that there there are shops that sell only bolts...they don't know the difference between a bolt and a screw and that is ok, cause the guy at the counter will enlighten them.)

Sometime ago a dentist friend of mine asked me where she could find a certain blow torch..she was planning to import it but decided to call me in case I had some idea. I told her SP road and gave her the name of one shop. She called me an hour later, ecstatic, to have not only found her product but to have found a vendor who is not only resourceful but a thorough professional. It is business and very professional, but there is hardly any effort made to sell you what you don't need. I have got lessons on checking purity of material, personal guarantees over brand names, demos, recommendations to other shops, all without me asking. I have had religious discourses over a cup of tea. (not cups, but thimbles made of low melting plastic and scalding tea). Standing there for an hour can be a wonderful lesson in customer relationship management.

When I moved to Bangalore in the late 90s the added joy of going to SP road was to be able to talk in my mother tongue, Gujarati. The Bohri community of Gujarat owns many shops on SP road. I felt good to chat with them. I think I lost that privilege after 2002. (I was too aware of the divide being felt in Gujarat. However, I recently had a long chat with Bohri business man. We  discussed Garba. I guess sometimes we should not let the politics get to our head.) 

In many ways I have to thank this street for recharging my creativity. And I have to thank the people on this street who entertain my requests for two wheels, 8 bolts and nuts while at the same time loading a hand pulled lorry for 10 kgs of the same. 

written in 2015