The air is thick with voices talking different languages and dialects. “ Shirt hain, pant bhi hain... (Shirts are there, pants too...) ” says Babu showing me his bag. When I meet this Odisha-native at Putharikandam Maidan on an unbearably hot Sunday afternoon, he has just finished his purchase from one of the many make-shift stalls that pop up on Sundays. Soon he and his friend, Shiva, move to a landscaped section of the Maidan where many migrant labourers like him are catching up with each other. Many more are seen arriving in buses and the crowd swells up in no time.
Migrant labourers at East Fort
This is a regular scene at the ground on all Sundays. By 8 am, the Sunday market is open. Customers, almost all of them migrant labourers working in the city, frequent the stalls selling clothes and accessories.
“The Sunday market was begun nearly seven years ago and now around 50 of us have put up stalls here. Sunday is an off day for most of the workers and so they spent the day either shopping here or simply shooting the breeze at the park nearby,” says Noushad, one of the traders.
Best buy
Shirts, trousers, pants, T-shirts, jeans, lungis, towels, track pants, Bermudas, belts, purses, sandals fly off the racks. The rates are fixed, ₹ 100 for shirts and T-shirts, ₹ 150 for jeans and the like. “We are selling these items at discounted rates and so we don’t let them bargain. Of course, we know Hindi. We don’t go wrong with the rates at least! Now that they speak Malayalam, the transactions become pretty easy,” adds Jahangir, another trader.
Some of the pieces on sale look worn-out and old. “We get much of the stuff from wholesale shops. But some of the clothes are those that have been lying unsold in popular textile shops in the area,” says Badusha, another trader.
Migrant labourers at Putharikandam Maidan
Nevertheless, that doesn’t bother the customers too much. “I can’t afford to go to a big showroom, so I am satisfied with what I get here,” says Bablu from Assam, a resident of the city for four years now. Babu and his friend Shiva, both from Odisha, have been in the city for only a few months, but every Sunday they turn up at the Maidan. “In addition to the shopping, I like spending time here; it is nice to meet people from around our homes and speak in the same language,” Babu says.
One can’t miss the camaraderie among them as they occupy every available space at the Maidan. There are people from West Bengal, Odisha, Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Delhi.
“Sometimes we meet people from our own village who work in different sites in the city. That makes Sunday get-togethers special indeed,” says Hari from Bengal, pointing to his friends Dalal and Sushant, who beam along with him.
By 6 pm, the stalls close shop and the labourers disperse, hoping to meet next Sunday.
A ringside view of people and places in the city
