Suddenly Wednesday

There's something about a Wednesday morning. When the sun shines in all its effusive and seductive glory, intense yet timid, peeking through the heavily curtained window, caressing my eyelids till I give in and smile that wan 'Good morning' smile at no one in particular. Then I stretch, adjust my pants to hide my morning boner and curse the heavens that the day should ever begin so early. And before I know it, the sun has already directed its fiery temper at me and hell itself has sent its prize minion - my dad, to torture me. Yes, there's definitely something about Wednesday morning 'bajaar' that really gets on my nerves!

As delighted as I am that EVS shall never again be a part of my life, I also feel it my civic and scholarly duty to criticise it every chance I get. Yeah, yeah, so jute bags are environment friendly and they are cheap, but they also happen to be particularly inimical to your palms, especially when you're standing in the midst of the dirty, sweaty, riff-raff and vegetable mongers in the stinking and oozy humidity of the early morning bazaar, two bags plump with the spoils of the market place, hanging pendulously from your palms, swaying lazily while biting down on your crying palms....and guess what? It itches. Although an 'itchy palm' is not the most appropriate thing to harbour when you are at the market-place, it certainly does augment your ire while you bargain and bicker with the relentless mongers. This being of no practical relevance to me( I rarely bargain and bicker with relentless mongers), I generally find myself directing my frustration to the person responsible for my involvement in the situation, dad. This generally turns out to be an exercise in futility as I find all my sour and stinging glares bounce off him like syphilis off penicillin.

'eta koto kore?' says the apple-faced, and profusely sweating dad of mine, scrutinising a tomato with his myopeic eyes.
'shaath taka kilo' replies the wily grocer. Then adds 'kintu apnar jonno chho taka!'
Despite not being a fan of early morning grocery shopping, I have had many such ordeals at the local bajaar and even someone with such a chronic deficiency in enthusiasm as me would notice a certain ceremony to the art of bargaining. It starts with the common pleasantries. A smile, a carefully constructed frown showing interest in a commodity, a pondering look while you sneakily fart, or a mere questioning glance between the shopper and the grocer sets off the procedure.
'dada, echhor niye jaan' the monger will say.
Enthused, though reluctant, the shopper replies ' koto kore?' rearing up slowly for the kill.
'dosh takay niye jaan. fresh maal ache. dekhun!' (skinning the bloated vegetable a little) ' ekdom khasa maal!'
' Oof! Tomra aaj-kal khoob churi korcho. Ei tuku echhor dosh taka? Aath takay dao!' The shot.
' Na dada, ek taka labh kori amra dosh takay( yeah right). Niye jaan. Nno taka deen!' The accomodation.
And so the business is settled. Quite frankly, I don't quite understand the efficacy of torturing oneself with the very act of negotiation. I mean, you might stare with self-satisfaction at a five-hundred rupee note you might have earned through all the years of saving one rupee at bargains at the bazaar, but I doubt anyone would.

I strongly believe that some people are not tailor-made to be bajaar-goers, and I, for better or for worse, fall in that category. Cooked vegetables aren't so much a problem, but a whole, raw jhinge just looks to me like a phallic object with gangrene , a potol looks like a striped phallic object with gangrene, a brinjal, a shiny, bloated and purpled suppurate bag, a pumpkin, well...a pumpkin. Besides, my dad suffers from a serious lack of restraint while imparting enlightening but mostly useless information about stuff that really is very irritating. Like explaining straight-faced to the squatted vegetable monger( who feigns interest mind you) how one shouldn't eat cauliflowers in summer or to me at KFC about how Colonel Sanders first made fried chicken in 1930. Believe me, the last thing you need while munching on chicken is someone's idle badinage! Coming back to the topic, I found myself lugging jute bags of vegetables, fresh from the slime and stench of the market place into our poor alto, promising myself that I would never subject myself to this kind of torture ever again. I had seen the poverty in the lines on the faces mocking joviality to earn a day's living, I'd seen the butcher's blood stained hand holding out the still-beating heart of a chicken for our scrutiny (which was kinda cool!), I'd seen the fisherman grab his fish from the great steel bucket and unfeelingly decapitate the struggling thing, I'd seen little kids carrying sacks to the vendors and crows feeding on refuse beside old women beseeching dada's and didi's to buy their stuff, and having heaved the bags into the back compartment of the alto, I breathed a silent 'Screw them' and cursed the daylight for waking me up so early. Bajaars be damned, I hope Spencers' and Food Bazaar and other industry replace them someday! And if you're a comunist, screw you too!