A self reflexive understanding of how the author has seen and experienced the market scene of Kasba, Kolkata through her everyday lense. This account is purely personal and has no political (even though personal is political) understatement attached to its agenda. It is a mere analysis of what is objectively as well as subjectively observed through everyday visits.
Happy Reading.
Usually the market spaces are not this empty. They are clingy, sweaty, tumultuous, raging, chaos filled with vibrant smells of a variety of vegetables, fruits, fishes, etc. Markets have a lot of quarreling and bargaining- it has a variety of sounds, ranging from whistles to voice modulation of shopkeepers and sellers trying to attract consumers or buyers. It includes rattling about rates and then screaming about changes(money).
When I visited the market, two to three months ago, it looked and felt exactly like the way I described it above. I mean people are so so busy while figuring out what they want to buy and half of the time they are just windowshopping with a scrawny face. Always suspicious of not being fooled or is the product good enough to buy. Surprisingly so, I even saw huge cars, bikes and rickshaws being taken through this road of the market - sometimes carefully and sometimes not so politely.
But in the last week of 2022, I saw a different change in the landscape of the market. Due to an input of a new pipeline in the drainage system underground, the market was completely left with scars and scattered digging everywhere. The roads became littered with dust and mud, and a lot of rubble and uneven terrains. It became difficult for shopkeepers to make their make-shift shops. It looked something like this.
With little amount of space and too much of waste all around, it became difficult for the shopkeepers to bring back the spirit of the markets. It took me as well as others who commute through this road daily a lot of struggle to cross it and reach their respective destinations. I was looking forward to explore the market more that day but I surely returned disappointed. Not being able to buy anything or even not being able to feed my curiosity of knowing about different types of vegetables.
One late evening when I was returning from a short walk, I was rather stunned to find out something which establishes the headline or title of this very article. I was completely at awe to find out the bustling noise and constant busyness of the buyers and sellers. It moved me to realize how desperation and the will to survive puts people to spots where they become hell bent in making the impossible possible.
The urge to claim your place and space and the urge to make your business run just the way it used to be could be seen with the help of this very act. Social processes continue to happen and flourish even though structural changes bound to happen. It is through self motivation and an act of collective will which could run an unsuccessful show into a successful one. Once again it has been proven its the power of habit that could change tracks and move mountains. It is about letting the modes of supply and demand chain being intact and not disrupting the regular habits of individuals.
These were the astonishing results.
It was refreshing enough to hear the buzz in the market place. With the lovely surroundings you get to understand how important it is to claim your space and to make people imagine a system that needs their active participation to make it a reality. This might be a poor example of such an active agent of understanding the necessity of claiming space, but this act redefines the urgency of maintaining a system, a series of habits to make the capital flow intact, to make the breadwinners not return emptyhanded, to ensure that the efficiency of a space/place is not altered by some minimal intrusion.
Claiming your space really is a stark invitation to a group of actions which compels us to understand our position in the society and to affirm our privilege in comparison to the desperate need of these individuals to have a space of their own in order to keep their business running. Sure with that comes a lot of aggression and foul-mouthing, yet that's just another inevitable characteristics of the human race.
Thank you for reading till this far. Hope you liked this account and don't forget to share yours if you've got the time and enthusiasm!
Yours truly
Srestha.
The opening paragraphs took me to all the old markets I visited in different cities. I feel bad about markets experiencing chaos due to non-market activities like traffic jams, honking, etc. The typical market chaos is something good to experience and this is what most international travelers like to experience. From a planner's perspective, markets if made free of non-market chaos would energize these places and develop several socio-economic benefits. From a non-planner perspective, the bling and food in such markets are unique to experience and should be experienced in a happy mental state. I like the title very much. If planners and sociologists collaborate, one can rewrite the article as Claiming space : The art of enjoying everyday.