Hardsell at the haat

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

A few of us in Santiniketan took the initiative to take permission from the authorities concerned and start a weekly haat or market in the forest bordering the town.

It soon turned into a weekly affair which brings in 40 or 45 sellers a week. The condition or criterion which allow anyone to display their wares is that the makers have to be sellers and a local of Santiniketan or its outskirts.

The forest authority's permission was conditional on no use of plastic and no lighting of fires. The haat committee's condition of not entertaining middlemen selling other people's wares, together with the rules that the forest authority laid down, has ensured an eclectic mix of products available at the haat.

The forest, which is the venue, actually falls between two tribal villages and therefore draws a whole lot of sellers from there. So a visitor to the Saturday afternoon haat has the opportunity to get at one place, organic vegetables, unpolished rice, tribal jewellery made from seeds and reeds, fabrics dyed in exotic local vegetable colours, a host of rugs and chatais, pottery, farm fresh cut flowers, cream cheese and crackers, home-made muffins and fresh ground coffee (bought in a huge flask to comply with the forest department's condition of no fire) and many other things.

The green of the lettuce, the shiny purple of the brinjal, the mauve of the gladioli, the earth tones of the pottery, the colourful weaves of the linen, the sounds of the instruments of all the musicians (folk singers, flute players and guitar strummers) who gather there, greet the visitors, locals and the growing number of tourists from India and abroad.

After the air conditioned, structured formats of shopping malls, the pleasure of a market whose contours are organic against a backdrop of the forest never fails to draw an enthusiastic response from the weariest of shoppers.

Last Saturday, just as I was preparing to leave for the haat, I got a call from Rahul enquiring whether or not I would be carrying my mobile phone. "Actually Kirsty is taking chicken to the haat today and in case it doesn't sell I will have to get somebody to fetch them," he said.

He and his English wife Kirsty run a lovely restaurant in a village bordering Santiniketan and I immediately thought I would be saved cooking dinner. "What is she making?" I asked Rahul and almost immediately kicked myself for being such a fool. Rahul obviously meant live, whole chickens for sale and not Chicken a la Kiev!

I trotted off to the haat and just as I was laying out my wares, Kirsty walked in with her many baskets. I got immersed in setting up my own display on my chatai. But very soon I bullied someone into minding my store and went to have a look at what all fellow sellers had brought in for the day.

Kirsty's baskets did contain chicken, but also to my surprise, puppies and kittens. Oh, she is selling all the litter that she can't cope with, I thought to myself. Till I read her point of purchase card: "Take one and get one free." As I walked on I came to Shyamali's stall which was selling lovely origami birds. Shyamali had used twigs to hang her birds from the trees and as they fluttered in the wind, I thought how window display designers could have benefited from this experience.

But what truly moved my city-bred heart was her price card. "In exchange for a beautiful pebble" it said. As I stood back to make way for the kids who had gathered in front of Shyamali to show her their pebbles, I thought that it was one of the most wonderful displays of an effort to inculcate a value system in the young.