Beltola Bazaar

                                                 

   

 A woman who was selling raw turmeric and fiddlehead fern, shyly smiled away from telling me her name. It was the strange string she had around her neck that caught my attention. It was a string made of bits and pieces of dry roots, she said, to cure her of jaundice that she was ailing from. She was confident of this remedy advised by the village quack. The others in the village had been cured when the string that was stuck to the neck loosened and expanded till it slipped down from the body in three days time. It was necessary for her to come to Beltola Bazar, jaundice was just a minor irritant, she said.

                                                   

    Stepping into a local market is like slipping into a wonderland. From the cloistered,organized shiny shelves of departmental stores, stocking all the exotic ingredients and food products that money can buy, it is disorienting at first to find oneself in the sounds and sights of a bazaar. For some unknown affinity, Beltola bazaar in Guwahati has always been my bench mark for markets. During a tenure in Leh, my mind harked back to the greens of Beltola bazaar; chancing on  farmer's market in a few European spots, I wondered about the simple mechanized display and wrap up of the market as compared to the manual lugging of vegetables at Beltola; or the visual blitzkrieg of Bangkok markets and discovering a nieghbourhood market that was so similar to the ones back home; or the roadside ones that spring up on a designated day; the mounds of onions at Devlali , the list is endless.

                                                 

Beltola bazar dates back to the days of Ahom rule when it was a trading hub for all the ethnic communities in and around Guwahati. Beltola was a protectorate of the Ahom Kingdom whose ruler assisted the Borphukan ( title given to the Governor of Ahom Kingdom stationed towards the west of Kaliabor river looking after Lower Assam). Once, this part of Assam was briefly occupied by the Mughals but who were sent packing by Lachit Borphukan in the Battle of Xaraighat. Since then Beltola was a protectorate kingdom under the Ahom rule and then the British till India gained independence. The present Beltola Rani's residence is very close to the Beltola Bazar. Rani Lakshmipriya Devi who died in 1991 played a pivotal role in keeping the traditional market alive emphasizing on the need to encourage the multi ethnicity presence and trading relations that had been continuing since ancient times.

                                                         

   Beltola Bazar never fails to amaze me with its people, the friendly banter with the vendors, the array of fruits and vegetables and the ones reminding me of childhood that are said to be disappearing from the face of this earth. There is a bond between the seller and the regular customers borne out of familiarity. In every trip of mine, I make it a point to visit this market, ostensibly to pick the special lemon (Kaji nemu), the fiddlehead fern and the ghost chillies to carry back to Delhi. But that is just an excuse. I love the rows of vendors displaying the vegetables  in neat piles. More than that I love coming across unfamiliar items that give a glimpse into the food culture of a community. On a couple of occasion , I've picked up these ingredients to try out the recipes these women have parted with. And they have led me onto interesting culinary journey in my  kitchen.

                                                       

    These vendors are mostly women who travel all the way from the Garo and the Khasi hills and nearby small towns, bringing with them the produce of their back yards, farms and little vegetable plots. Sometimes a few  of them collectively ferry the village's or their neighbourhood's fruits and vegetables to the big city. They bring in some of the best green vegetables, a variety of colacasia, bamboo shoots, banana flower, rattan shoot, pineapples, oranges, poultry and eggs and whole lot of indigenous ingredients.

                                                       

    Their journey begins a little after midnight, starting from their villages to the nearest transport hub and then to Guwahati. Many a times, they travel precariously perched on a heap of sacks through the night in small vans. The moment they arrive at the crack of dawn, the middlemen hover around them offering them as low price as possible. Some of the gullible are taken in and succumb, while the seasoned ones can hold their own.

The market begins as early as five in the morning and used to continue till late in the evening until a few months back. However a recent administration order requires them to wrap up by ten in the morning on Thursdays and by noon on Sundays. Ostensibly to ease the traffic, this direction from the local administration is causing considerable discomfort to the small sellers. They now have to wrap up right when the business picks up. The administration, in fact, with a little imagination could play up the multi ethnicity role and it's historical context to turn this into a tourist attraction.

 There can be space for all, both the aseptic malls and the vibrant local markets. I have always felt that it is a local market that gives a true feel of the place, its people and their lives. Beltola Bazar being no different.

   

Meditation On A Drive

                                             

     It was those bunched up bright yellow pumpkin flowers that made me stop. Dipped in rice flour paste and deep fried , the ronga lau phulor bor were a delicacy that hadn't touched my taste buds for many years.   Rumu, whose cab we had hired for the journey from Goalpara to Guwahati, indulged and let me reinstate  my connection  with the land that never ceases to fill me with a warm feeling. The overcast sky threatening to pour down notwithstanding, the car came to a halt .

       This Deobariya Haat, the  Sunday market  somewhere between Boko and Soigaon took me back to another era when these were the only produce we would see. Available in accordance to the seasons, tasting right just then. A common utterance during meal times comes to mind reiterating the importance of seasonal fruits and vegetables,

“ Botoror pasoli  khabo lage…”

So we were told when the nose screwed up at the sight of gourds, gourd shoots, tender drumsticks, ripe jackfruits and all those vegetables and fruits that seemed unpalatable.  The produce of the land is ready to be consumed only at a particular time of the year because that is when it is full of virtues that benefit the body and yield best to those discerning sensors in the tongue. The colours, the sights and sounds of this little bazaar where the fresh seasonal produce of the nearby villages are brought, were a treasure of long forgotten fruits and vegetables. Where it was a part of monotonous lives in the smaller places, chancing on it was like an excitement of discovering  what was thought to be long lost.

          These little markets that spring up along the highway are the best places to source from.  Squatting in colourful mekhelas, the bright faces of the local Rabha and Garo women glisten and glow. The fresh ghost chillies that the world is raving about, tender ferns, cucumbers , banana flowers, bamboo shoots and gourd shoots, those fragrant kaji lemons… and that maddening aroma of pineapples. All organically grown. All arranged in little heaps, in groups and the larger ones kept in singles to be sold thus and not by the scales. You have not tasted pineapples unless you have walked past some of those from the Garo hills. Relishing them begins from the sweet aroma that they tantalise you with. A nick with the knife and a burst of juice trickles down. The best way to get them ready is to wash and remove the peel, core out the 'eyes', salt and wash them and then cut them into chunks over a plate or a bowl so you don’t waste the juice.

                                   

  Incidentally, this is a market where the vendors are women barring aside one or two. These Garo and Rabha women are said to be extremely hard working and enterprising , threw in Rumu as we continued our journey with our fresh vegetables in the boot of the car. He elaborated that these women are up at daybreak tackling the household chores, tending to the livestock, the vegetable patches and field. Whereas majority of the menfolk awaken just before the sun touches the zenith and nurse their homemade liquor through the day between spurts of work.

                                           

 You’ve done well to pick those vegetables here, baido, he continues. You will not regret. Whenever I've passengers on this route I always pick vegetables from here. They don’t spoil for many days unlike the ones picked from the town market. And they taste the best too. For the simple reason that they are not injected with chemicals to help them grow or ripen overnight. What were those bamboo hollows for, I ask. Are they to be filled with rice and slow cooked on embers? Oh those! Rumu explained that the women in these parts, stash a particular smaller variety of fish, caught in their jakois, into the bamboo hollows and leave it to ferment and dry on bamboo racks over the earthen stove at home. Once it is cured, this dried fish is then cooked in small amounts or made into chutneys. It is a popular delicacy and is also said to have medicinal  properties to prevent malaria in these densely foliaged parts of the countryside.


                                                   

      I looked out of the speeding car watching the distant landscape with the rolling hills and young green of the paddy fields  change it’s orientation while the nearby trees and roadside homes ensconced in the privacy of a verdant  buffer offered by the  tall jackfruit,amla, mango, areca trees, mausandas,  zipped past.  My mind went back to the little market again and again, triggering a thought here and there.

      The red bag I’d noticed in the market contained some white cotton roll like stuff. These are eri cocoons , the lady had offered.  Just then a customer had come, checking the cocoons, he tried bargaining but she was not to budge.  Weaving at homes had always been a part of daily life in Assam just as raising a vegetable patch, or cultivating a bamboo grove or fish in the pond backyard. Just enough to fulfill the daily needs of a household. Threads would be spun out of these cocoons on a wooden spinning wheel. These then would be mounted on a wooden loom resting under a thatched shed usually placed near the kitchen that allowed women of the household to alternate between their chores, cooking and weaving. Memories came tumbling down of my grandmother and my aunt in Tipling ; sitting at the loom combing in the warp and the weft; of sliding the shuttle between the threads; clicking the bamboo pedals with their feet in a neat orchestra . Basic mekhelas, gamusas and fabric emerged from these looms for the family then.

  The looms now feed the many boutiques and shops  in the towns and cities. A week back we had dropped by an NGO, Grameen Sahara, at Soigaon that was involved with many self sustaining programmes for the local people. Strengthening eri silk weaving was one of them. Right from developing a system of  providing cocoons and threads on credit, the NGO untiringly supports the local people to weave the eri fabric that has found a niche market in the western world. Their adherence to quality has earned them the stamp of approval of Silkmark.  For the uninitiated, eri is a tenacious warm silk fabric and it’s thread is derived from the Ailanthus silk worm. It is also known as ‘ahimsa’ silk since the cocoons are used after the moths leave them. You can be sure to find an eri shawl stashed in a trunk in every Assamese household that will be brought out with the first hint of a chill in the air. These have been handed down from generations, capturing and bequeathing the warmth of the ancestors in their threads, mostly woven by a grandmother or a great grand mother.

  As the car nears the outskirts of the Guwahati city, the idyllic landscape is dotted more frequently with concrete structures peeping over distant green canopies or jostling each other. The mind humours the little ideas that bubble up now and then. It is heartwarming to come across spaces that rekindles the bond with the roots. And it is heartening to see the social development efforts striving to provide a better life to the simple rural people by empowering them. Retaining the unique identity of an area while developing it to provide basic amenities and bringing prosperity to it's people without churning out concretised clones of cities and towns, is the challenge. It will be worthwhile to keep in mind that the sight of the pumpkin flowers and fresh pineapples in the roadside farmer's market with the paddy fields and the distant blue hills in the background will continue to charm the travellers in the now and forever.