Pali Market

We live near a busy market where fruit and vegetables are haggled over every day. During the day the market is alive with the music of people trying to find the finest produce for the cheapest price. Stalls line the street, each stall displays beautifully shiny fruit or vegetables and the men inside call out to passers by, "Best fruit, Best Veg."
Ragged children sometimes run up the street, begging for money, occasionally a black-cloaked lady holding a small bundle at her breast will walk down asking for change to feed her baby. The market is exactly what I thought of when I first heard we were moving to India.

But night time is a different story. I expected that, at night, all produce is packed away, stalls are closed up, and the street empties until the new day. On the weekend I saw what really happens as my husband and I walked home from a friend's house at 2 in the morning. Some produce is indeed packed away, but only to clear an area large enough for the vendor to lie down and sleep for the night. The remaining produce is left on the stands with a muddy tarp over the top and tied down. Sometimes a tuft of hair sprouts from under the tarp as the owner slumbers beneath. As we walked down the quiet street I was struck by the life of these vendors; their home is their make-shift stall, their bed is under the pile of onions, their warmth a dirty tarp. And yet here I walked down that street, obviously foreign, I had a lump in my pocket that was obviously a wallet, it was 2 in the morning - and I felt perfectly safe. If I walked through most US cities at 2 in the morning I'd be clutching my keys and racing along, hoping I wouldn't get mugged.