BASTAR – A TRAVELOGUE IN 4 PARTS : PART 2

Hope you enjoyed the PART 1

To continue.....

TOKAPAL MARKET 

No adjectives can do justice to describe the Tokapal Market. The tehsil of Tokapal, 20 kms SW of Jagdalpur, hosts a weekly Haat on Mondays. We were there a little after 11, when the bazaar starts assembling to see the women in colourful sarees coming in with headloads of their wares. Within minutes they had settled down with their goods in tidy little displays in front of them.

For a marketplace it was unusually quiet. Only the odd vendor or two cried out the price to draw attention. Most women sat there passively. When we approached them, there was no in-your-face selling. The stoicism was all too evident. 

The usual staples of a market were there – vegetables, fruits, grains, fish, fowl and meat. But there were curiosities, most conspicuous being dried mahua flowers, in heaps and piles, used to ferment wine.

Another oddity that caught my eye were winged beans, seen rarely in city or even village markets.

Gulbobo is a delicacy that is mandatory to take home to the kids.

We traipsed our way through rows and rows of greens and condiments, stopping occasionally to quench our curiosity and take pictures. The women indulged us always. I tasted Chapda, the famous chutney made by crushing red ants found on Sal trees. A woman was frying jalebis.

Tokapal Market is a perfect place for people watching and they indulge the cameras.

Shopping in the Haat ends with a refreshing drink or two. There are 2 options to pander to your senses – Mahua Wine and the Salfi Beer. The latter is tapped from a date palm like tree and is served in cups made out of Sal leaves.

COCKFIGHT

Later that afternoon I watched a cockfight in all its gory. A large crowd had gathered in a circle around the bamboo fence inside which the action took place. Most of them were inebriated, judging by the scent of their breath. The fight is quick, less than 2 minutes, and the end comes fast to the losing cock. The owner of the winning cock pockets a sum ranging from seven to ten thousand in addition to the dead chicken. An equal amount of money changes hands outside the ring in bets. There are about 15 fights in one afternoon. I gathered all these data from a bunch of enthusiastic gents who were happy to see a stranger from a distant land amidst them to witness their culture.