( from a blog written by one Mark Ellison )
........On either side on the road there is an endless line of stores and taking up valuable pavement space a long line of semi-permanent tiny blue-painted ramshackle wooden stores interspersed with temporary ‘market stalls’. It appears you can just about fulfil all your needs – local restaurants galore specialising in cuisine from differing regions of the country, at least 4 cinemas in the space of 500 meters showing the latest Bollywood blockbusters, mobile phone and pirated DVD vendors, barbers snipping and shaving, tailors hunched over whirring sewing machines, cobblers tapping and gluing, key cutters filing, betel leaf purveyors preparing, watch repairers squinting, clothing retailers heckling, snack cookers frying, milk parlours blending, pharmacists prescribing, juice sellers squeezing, a flour miller sieving, a fresh vegetable vendor calling and much more, not forgetting the wretched looking beggars… Whilst I am taking in this kaleidoscope of activity I also need to be wary of where I am walking, bundles of rags on the litter strewn uneven pavement suddenly become a sleeping body, dogs sprawled out unfazed, chewing goats tied to trees, small kids running about oblivious, and of course the occasional ‘Holy Cow’. All of this to a backdrop of once elegant but now faded and decrepit 100 year old and more colonial architecture, plus a mixed backing track of honking horns and Hindi music accentuated with the perfumed smoky aroma of burning incense and the less than perfumed occasional stench of shit and piss all makes for an exciting and intoxicating experience…
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