KR Market + Avenue Road

KR Market

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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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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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. 

 

Gundopanth Street

Can you look at a banana and pinpoint where it came from? I can't. But for the traders of Gundopanth Street behind KR Market, it only takes a look to 'GeoTag' it.







Like most of the bananas that are sold in Bangalore, these traders came here, over the last five decades, with the bananas they sell. From the rich irrigated fields in Madurai, Thanjavur and Thiruchirapalli districts.







Even though bananas continue to flow in from Tamil Nadu, these days, the supplies are augmented by bananas from the newly irrigated fields of Gangavati and Bellary in Northern Karnataka.






The next time I will peel a banana, I'm going to pause and try to make an educated guess about where it came from.

Godown Street

Strike! The carrom board kind.

Nawab Hyder Ali Khan Road

His name is Shahenshah - The King among Kings.

Sethu Rao Road

Mandya in Bangalore

Mysore Road, KR Market

KR Market

A scrub bath, fresh paint for their horns and sweet jaggery instead of sweat. Today is Maatu Pongal. Bangalore's bulls get the day off for their yearly day of pampering. 

 
What? The bull's got his hooves painted, why not my nails?