A smiling man in an orange checked button up shirt and striped dhoti sells long green beans in a vegetable market outside of Madurai.

We were on our way to Karaikudi in Chettinad when we found ourselves at a vegetable market near Madurai. We stopped to take in the action. Business was brisk. Women were shopping for the next day’s main meal.

  • An Indian woman dressed in a gauzy orange and green checked sari sits on a blue tarp and sells neatly arranged green okra in a market outside of Madurai.
  • An Indian man wearing a pink and white striped button up shirt sits on the ground in front of his neatly composed groups of carrots and green beans in a vegetable market outside of Madurai.
  • Long green chillies spill out of a red bag sitting open on white tarp laid on the ground in a vegetable market outside of Madurai.
  • Two South Indian women wearing colourful saris, one pink, the other mauve and yellow, bend low over a large mound of russet potatoes, placing their selections in round silver bowls. Many people in the vegetable market walk around them and do their own shopping.

Colourful blankets, spread on the ground, were de facto kiosks to display produce. Squatting vendors worked to balance antique scales with weights and balances as they tallied purchases.

The produce

There were small red onions, long green beans, brown husked coconuts, fat orange carrots, beige new potatoes, ripe red tomatoes and mounds of shiny green chilies. Eggplants came long and white, round and purple or in  striped mauve orbs. They all told the story of what the farmers had been tending in the fields we glimpsed from the road on our journey.

  • An elderly South Indian woman wearing a turquoise blue sari and a perfectly coiffed bun at the back of her head leans over to inspect the small bowl of ripe red tomatoes at her feet, as the fabric of her dress gently embraces the rim of the steel bowl.
  • A South Indian woman wearing an olive green sari and black top holds a
A white cow with large horns is framed between a white tarp and a black motorcycle on the grounds of a vegetable market in Madurai.
Cows roam amongst shoppers, merchants and motorcycles at a vegetable market near Madurai.

A woman, face wrinkled and hollow, looked nonchalant as a cow wondered up from behind her to lap up some of the onions that spilled from the pile on the tarp where she sat. She did not, could not, protest. 

All cows are sacred in India. Shiva, the mightiest of the Hindu Gods, has a bull named Nandi who is his transport and in constant attendance to him. The reasoning follows that if a cow is near now, perhaps Shiva is as well.

A second pass

On our second pass around the place, a slim man dressed in a pressed orange shirt and dusty blue dhoti (men’s sarong) beckoned for me to come near. He was holding a small coconut towards me.

I pressed my palms together to greet him and mimed my lack of money. He waved off my confusion and pressed the coconut into my hands before bowing and pressing his own palms together. As I took the gift he smiled.

I pressed my hand to my heart and smiled back in gratitude. Bowing my head a little, I noticed he was missing a few toes on his left foot. I could not deny him the joy of giving what he could anymore than I could help wondering how he lost those toes.

  • A South Indian coconut seller wearing a long denim-blue dhoti and ochre coloured button up shirt, sits on the ground amongst his piles of young unhusked coconut, and extends his hand out to offer a half cut coconut in a gesture of friendship.
  • Slender whole coconut in husk sit alongside green and yellow limes on burlap. The burlap beneath the limes coordinates with the husks of the coconuts.

I realized that after a mere fifteen minutes in the market we’d been sized up. We were the only foreigners and as such, of course we stood out. Especially as one of us had a camera and the other was jotting notes and asking questions (through our Tamil-speaking Travel XS guide, Charles). The coconut felt like we had passed a test. 

  • A man selling vegetables sits on a tarp amongst his large piles of eggplant. He passes a customer a handful of purple eggplant while a young girl in a pink dress and pig tales drinks from a small white cup and looks at the camera.
  • A mound of small, round, purple and white striped Indian eggplant sit on taupe coloured burlap with faded red and purple text in a vegetable market outside of Madurai.

We left feeling our presence was not only tolerated but, our genuine interest and kind intentions were perceived and appreciated. Food provided a key to connect. Once again, it opened a door between cultures when words could not.

Lotus flower, Kerala, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, South India, India, Faces Places and Plates blogGratitude

Thank you to the Kerala Travel Mart Society and Travel XS for sponsoring our trip to South India and for their gracious hospitality during our travels in throughout Kerala and Tamil Nadu in 2016.

 

All words and photos are our own and were not shared with our sponsors prior to publication.

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