SJP Road/Mysore Road

A couple of rare yellow top.

Which Main? What Cross? has moved. The blogger now lives in Mumbai and the current images can be seen here: Mumbai Paused.

KR Market / Mysore Road Flyover

The temple and dargah under the flyover

Anchored between the daily ups and downs of the market place, these places of worship provide much needed feeling of stability for traders in Benglur's biggest market.

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Oosman Khan Road

Safe hands.

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KR Market

Market Secrets. All of us go to markets and supermarkets to buy products and services. But if you are in a highly competitive field of designing products, testing prototypes  and user interface for electronic gadgets in India's IT Capital - Benglur, you go to a traditional market to borrow ideas and learn tricks. 

My friend Vivek Dhage designs and tests proptypes of of new products, user interfaces and usability functions in gadgets like mobile phones that are made in Finland and China. When he pulled me along to the market to study patterns, I tagged along. And suddenly, I'm looking at the marketplace in a new light. 

It wasn't just the patterns in the marketplace that he was studying, it was the pattern around which we humans function. He pointed out methods honed over centuries in the madness known as the  market. Little tricks of the trade to trick our eyes into noticing things on sale and convert that interest into a transaction. Tricks and methods that Vwake and his colleagues will use, improve and use on the next generation of gadget interfaces and designs.   

Here's a simple and effective trick used in the City Market that has a fancy name: Contextual Innovation. He pointed out a big mound of coconuts on sale. In between the coconuts was a black mobile phone attracting eyeballs. You will be surprised how well it works in attracting attention to the mound among the tens of coconut mounds around us. By far, this is the most commonly used trick in the market these days. 

Click here for Vwake's pictures: Patterns

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Sri Dharmaraya Temple Street

The Original Bangalore Habba While the preparations are being made for the Karaga procession, the narrow Dharamaraya Temple Street is closed for traffic and the stretch is transformed into a narrow fair ground. The thousands who have come to the temple are crowding around the various attractions. And almost everyone is busy munching. From the Bangarapet Paani Puri to Bengali Sweets; chatpata Rajasthani Snacks to the seasonal raw mango with salt and red chili powder, there's a lot to choose from. Down the road, the stand and drink wine shop is also doing brisk business. And for the people organising the event, there's a feast being prepared within the temple (pic above). Meanwhile on the street, it's colourful and noisy. All the men and women, selling the usual Mela attractions have congregated here, shouting above the non-stop loudspeaker announcements asking parents to hold their children's hands and not to let them go out of sight.

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Sri Dharamaraya Swamy Temple Road

The Original Bangalore Habba

It's Karaga time once again and the Sri Dharmaraya Swami Temple near Corporation, has a fresh coat of paint. While the children enjoy their summer vacations playing outside the temple, inside, priests are offering special prayers before the big annual event on April 9th. Thousands of devotees are expected to congregate here on 9th of April, in the evening, for the Karaga procession that will visit all the major temples and a dargah in the Pete area. Karaga is the one of the most important festivals in the city's calendar. To know more about the Karaga, click here.  

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New Bamboo Bazaar

New Bamboo Bazaar.

Names can be deceptive. Like the New Bamboo Bazaar, next to City market. It sells more more metal and less bamboo (Bamboo is used for ladders and scaffolding). The New Bamboo Bazaar popularly known as the Gujli/Gujri, covers the area between S J Park and Kalasipalayam bisected by a stinking nullah. The bazaar is a collection of tens of little shops stocking scrap metal and second hand metallic parts. Like the humble shop shown above that sells everything you need to repair a tractor or build one from scratch.  Jai Kisan!

We are Indians. We have an army out there that helps us reuse most things we throw.  And if it is made from metal, it usually ends up here. Scrap is landed here by the truck loads in these narrow lanes littered with metal bits. They are sorted, broken down and sold for reuse.

The New Bamboo Bazaar or Gujli is home to of hundreds of small scrap dealers and hawkers. Each of them have their own niche and regular customers. Like this shop, brothers Ali and Hamid inherited from their father. They deal in springs and gears for lathe machines sourced from Mumbai. Their customers are small industries from the many industrial estates that dot Bruhat Benglur or Greater Bangalore.  

The price is usually settled through  old-fashioned bargaining. However, most metal is traded based on weight. The going rate for Mild Steel (MS) is about Rs. 45. You can get them in any size you wish. The customer can sift through the wares or state the required size and the shopkeeper will do it for you. You can also get a wide range of metal alloys  but no one will guarantee you the perfect mix. Here's a young man weighing scrap metal before making a sale. 

And finally here are some friendly faces from the Gujli. Meet Chottoo and Company. That's little Syed Noor with his friend Athalluah, standing shoulder to shoulder. 

 

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Mavalli Rama Rao Road

Don't let the pictures of cows and children fool you. This narrow road connecting SP Road and Avenue Road, lined with hardware stores supply some of the high-tech needs of India's technology capital - Benglur. The shops lining this street and this part of the market are an important lifeline to one of Benglur's largest employer - the small scale engineering industry. They provide regular and specialised raw materials (like special metals) and precision tools, for the best price, to industries spread across acres and acres of tin roofed work spaces, in places like Peenya to the North West and Jigani in the South. These small engineering firms are the foot soldiers for the precision engineering companies that make Benglur the capital of precision mechanical engineering of India. Like they say about Peenya - it manufactures nuts and bolts to ISRO's rockets and satellites, with help from Benglur's small industries who can meet their standards. And the raw materials. It's most probably sourced from these narrow gallis.

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Bada Makaan Cross, Off H Siddiah Road

Indians believe in rebirth. Especially when it comes to automobiles. Here on H.Siddiah Road and the many cross roads branching from it, you can get all the parts required to resurrect any maal gaadi from scrap.  Seen above is a broken fuel tank being given a life extending weld.

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Avenue Road

Our workplace, or cubicle says a lot about who we are. It's our personal territory, the sweatshop.

And this is Maula's workplace. Just off Avenue Road, on the city market end. Maula works in a room with no windows, in a creaky old building that was built in the 1920s. 

Here, he and his assistant labour away, embroidering wonderful little designs on clothes that are sold in markets around Bangalore. Surrounded by pictures of his favourite star.