“Where are you from”
“Goa”
“Oh! Lucky you, its so much of fun, I have been to the Night Market.”
I give my sheepish smile; well I can’t let people know that I have never been there.
For the past 5yrs we have been planning to go this absolutely to do place on every tourist agenda. The Arpora night market happens every Saturday during the tourist season. And make shift shanties are put around the a lake space. There are make-shift parking slots, with different parking area for taxi’s and private cars. As the place has been spruced up since our last visit we decided to ask help, can you beat it, we could not find a Konkani speaking Goan for nearly 15mnts through Calungute, the place is infested with Hindi speaking Cowbelters!!
The central Nevus of the market is the eating area which serves all sorts of food, even an apology for vegetarian food. With the central band playing.
It was quite interesting to see the stalls and the wares they were vending, the handicrafts, and teas of different flavours. Clothes, crystals, the mehendi applier, the metal works. Books on popular Indian philosophy dominated by Kama sutra. The stalls came in cyclic layout.
The stall owners who are vending their wares strive hard to keep the air of the Rudyard Kipling’s India, with kids in tow, who hand around sleeping in the stall places, their clothing carefully crafted to recreate the visual of rural India, Sari’s draped in North Indian styles or women clad in traditional Lambani outfits. The stall owners are astute enough to gauge the customer and choose the language to speak in.
The tourist themselves, clad in clothes that reeks of I am tourist to Goa, loud brash Delhi-ites, drunken slobs from Bangalore, a few foreigners here and there, interestingly the metal artifacts and books stalls are dominated by the foreigners like the prayer equipment stalls.
We spent an hour doing usual things done at Ajmal Khan Road Delhi that bargaining and not buying, neither the handcraft, nor the food, was Goan. It was like entering Sarojini Market in Delhi the only difference being the Russian speaking vendors are not Sardars.
Just a request domestic tourists coming to Goa, Goa is a state, where people live just like in any other state, we are peace loving and like our quiet, can you kindly respect us?
Nicely compiled… 🙂
Thanks Ashish,
But this is not compiled.. that is I have neither created a CD, nor a book list that I have not gathered information and put it together as a collection or publication. This is my experience in Goa being a Goan we are invaded by vendors from out of state catering to tourists.