The Ninjas of the Vegetable Market

(Published in Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, on 14th March 2009)

Living alone makes one evolve time-saving and effort-saving mechanisms that could win one doctoral grants in an ideal world. One learns to use a combination of stilettos and amateur ballet to change light bulbs without having to drag a chair to hop on to. One learns to invite male friends (or female friends who don’t use moisturiser on their hands) for coffee at strategic times – usually when a bottle of pickle has to be opened. One learns to calculate at which angle a gas cylinder’s centre of mass is lowest so one can haul it up. One learns to study the winds so one can decide when to spring-clean the house so it stays freshest for longest. One evolves a series of recipes that will keep fresh for a week. But despite these survival instincts that would have warmed Charles Darwin’s heart, and brought a glad tear to his eye, one’s evolution is hampered by one insurmountable task – buying vegetables.

I recently remarked to a married colleague, “I think I might end up getting married just so I don’t have to go shopping for vegetables anymore.”He looked up from his desk with a slow sigh, “that’s my one regret about marriage. My dad warned me. I was a young fool.” Burdened by the wisdom of his four months in connubial shackles, he shook his head dolefully.

One cannot entirely relate to this unless one has seen the Clique of Shopping Aunties in action. This lobby, having gone to the vegetable market with religious regularity for several decades, has evolved a women’s self-help cooperative, complete with a secret handshake that consists of gimlet-sharp glances and unerring aim with everything from sapotas to cucumbers. Their modus operandi is this. One sees a Benign Woman with two almost empty baskets next to her. One takes one’s place in the queue behind her cheerfully. A Smiling Woman with a couple more empty baskets and a few bundles of spinach walks up and says, by way of conversation, “excuse?” Looking at one’s own basket laden with three whole cauliflowers, a handful of beans, five potatoes, ten brinjals and enough oranges and apples to fill one’s five-inch-diametered fruit basket, one graciously allows the Smiling Woman precedence in the queue.

And then the Clique’s Siege begins. One realises in an intense moment of absolute horror that the four baskets will be filled to beyond the brim, when one sees vegetables flying from one end of the stall. One observes two women raiding tray after tray with an alacrity that would put assembly-line workers of the nineteenth century to shame. These are the Amazons of the Clique. The sindoor is their battle paint, the dupattas tied around their ample waists, their armour. Their fingers are their swords, and the long plaits they whip around, cutting encroachers-of-their-space across the cheek, their shields. In a frenzy of determination, they fling the constituents of their future dinners in graceful arcs to the Smiling Woman and the Benign Woman. With the more delicate of missiles, one of the Amazons darts to the middle, completing a chain that passes vegetables from hand to hand in a blur of action. Their work done, the Clique catches up for gossip as one waits for the bored salesman to bill the vegetables, carrot after painful carrot.

When I announced my intention to marry for vegetables rather than love, my usually pragmatic mother laughed.“Don’t be stupid!” she said, “men buy all the vegetables your Amazons leave behind.”And sure enough, next time round, I did notice an array of victimised men shuffling their feet, waiting for the rotted vegetables the Amazons reject.