Of tours and detours in post-pandemic Patiala
The life, the roads, the shops and the traffic are back to the same normal, for the time being at least, and the new normal of complete silence and absence of human activity that had set in for almost 16 months or so due to the lockdown and fear seem to have evaporated in thin air. Public memory is short.
With my grand-daughter’s birthday just round the corner, I decided to take a tour of the interior city of Patiala for some return gifts, decoration and knick-knacks. It’s been ages since I had visited this part of the city for many reasons. Firstly, with age and especially when one has winded up all familial responsibilities and also packed up professionally as a retiree,, the need for shopping is reduced to minimum. Secondly, with the upsurge in malls and technology-driven shopping sites, the old and traditional hubs of shopping and shopkeepers have been relegated to the past. Gone are the days when we would to rush to the main bazaars, perched on rickshaws, fully energised and focused on window shopping and not missing a single item on display. I remember how I used to hop from shop to shop, haggling for things that could suit my pocket.
Revisiting these lanes and bylanes in a chauffeur-driven car, negotiating narrow streets of Adalat Bazaar, Anardana Chowk, Lahori Gate, Top Khana Mod, Qila Chowk, Darshani Gate, and Safabadi Gate, I don’t know when the old memories sneaked in and I saw myself as a young girl of 16, gaunt and pale, walking self-consciously beside my parents and siblings. I almost visualised myself entering a shop that used to be our favourite eatery, where the whiff of tikki could be inhaled half a furlong away. There used to be only three or four tables, the seating capacity
NO MALL, HOWEVER ENORMOUS, TRENDY AND BURGEONING WITH GLOBAL BRANDS CAN STEAL THE CHARM OF THESE OLD INTERIOR MARKETS
not more than 20, and it used to be packed. Sometimes, people had to stand in queue for their turn. Even today, the aroma of those freshly made tikki and the sound of its frying, like the rapid flow of a rivulet watered my mouth. But the tikki shop that could sharpen my hunger pangs even now was not to be seen anywhere. In its place was a cloth shop with a ghost-like mannequin, adorned with lifeless clothes, trying to attract the attention of prospective customers.
The contours of these age-old markets, the conglomeration of anything and everything under the sun, are the same, yet so much has changed and so much is missing. My eyes fervently searched for my favourite spots in the congested bazaars, with a sinking heart, lest all that was old and beautiful and tempting has been replaced with the new and mechanical.
To my surprise, much had not changed with time. The vendor with the heap of colourful glass bangles was at the same spot, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a dark, sareedraped poor woman, selecting equally dark bangles. And that vendor with colourful tea mugs was also there, sitting quietly, fanning away the sweat and the worry, perhaps calculating mentally, if he could buy dinner from his earning today. The shop displaying every kind of pickle is there and the one with toys, pocket-friendly and colourful, is also there, only the shopkeepers, at least some of them, perched comfortably are perhaps of the next generation. Thank God all is not lost.
No mall, however enormous, trendy, built in the latest architectural design, fitted with state-of-the-art gadgetry and burgeoning with global brands can steal the charm of these old interior markets, the antique spots of hustle and bustle for lesser mortals so to say. Some traces of ‘(b)old and beautiful’ are still left, not gnawed and swallowed by project ‘development’.