Chor Bazaar

We went on a Sunday morning walkabout photography tour of Chor Bazaar, the market of thieves as it's reassuringly known. I guess you walk around and see if there's anything you like or recall seeing in your grandmother's home before someone broke in and cleared the place out.

The tour was organized by an energetic Bengali gentleman, part of a group of like - minded people who first started this in Calcutta. All artistic endeavors in India effectively have to be run by Bengalis. If anyone from any other community, say Punjabis or Gujaratis or Tamilians were to have the gumption to organize a photography tour or a singing contest or a painting exhibition I think people would fall off their chairs laughing hysterically before the tour, or contest or exhibition had even begun. That, or they'd start throwing things, or both. A bit of throwing and lots of hysterical laughing I think.

So our designated Bengali tour guide exhorted us to "get lost out there over there ok?", by which he meant in Chor Bazaar, but he still wanted us back by 12.15, so not too lost, I guess. He also encouraged us to make the photography tour interactive by asking people if it was ok to take their picture and then also showing them the photograph, which I thought was a genuinely good idea. Must do will do shall do.

Chor Bazaar is part antique mart, part artisanal centre and part market straight out of the middle ages with well - fed goats roaming around mutton street, with the Genius Chicken Center (really) deploying some not so genius ways of butchering the cooped up chickens one by one.
The artisan pictured below was sandpapering a wooden table. One table takes him an entire day and he seemed at peace with it.

Photograph by Tarini Tiwari

Lunch was at Café Leopold, back in our neck of the woods, our manageable chaos.