Sunday Marketainment

Sundays become marketainment when one shops for groceries, veggies, snacks and so on. Be it supermarkets or the local vegetable market, the crowd of families and specially with kids is quite a scene. Insistent on pushing the shopping carts, nagging parents for another stationery item, crying until the chocolate is not bought, and tugging at parents’ hands to lift them up in the middle of a crowded queue are familiar sights from the little ones.

The cows seem to occupy a lot of the road space when shopping for vegetables from local markets. The smell of fresh cow dung keeps the flies away from the vegetables while the roads ‘go green’ besides the water sprayed by the sellers on the greens, leafy greens actually to keep them fresh under the blazing hot sun.

One cannot miss the roasted groundnuts on a wheeling cart, corn cooked in portable cookers and raw corn toasted on pieces of coal on simmered fire, tea stalls with whiffs of cigarette to add to the mass market feel, and colorful balloons and toys that attract kids and their cries to this Sunday market scenario.

Be it churches, temples, mosques, or any other place of worship, the religious commitment to reserve quiet on an otherwise plan it all and do it all on Sundays is quite an achievement. Here too the crowd to connect to their Gods and give Him/Her weekly offs is a unique public phenomena. 

The sun seems to set sooner on Sundays as another week gets ready to rise. With a heavy heart to let the curtains go down to wrap up this weekly marketainment, the next 6 days feel longer than the queue in the supermarkets.