I'm standing at the supposed hippy flea market at Anjuna Beach, and wondering, "Why do people come here?"Consider that it only occurs on Wednesdays. And that nothing there is native to Goa, it is either rejects from some ready-made garments company, or a lot of ethnic trinkets from various parts of India including Mysore, Kashmir and Rajasthan. Also consider that the quality is really bad, and the prices are much higher than any other place in India, as they are geared toward the foreigners. And not to mention the heat and the humidity, which made me want to go away and sip iced tea at some remote corner. But I had to wait about three hours since my friends were just getting started on their shopping spree.
After one hour of tackling ear wax removers (they literally walk with wax in their metal thingies and expect you to believe that that came from your ears), and watching my friends buy frog dolls and lamp shades, I felt dehydrated, bored and annoyed. If only I could click my heals, and I wouldn't be in Kansas anymore.
I bought a 1-liter bottle of water, and started conversing with the sellers who looked like they had time to talk. There was Kamal, the Kashmiri guy who sold embroidered sheets, and came down every year for eight months, leaving his two children behind. His regret was not seeing his kids enough. There was Mashora (sp?) the dark princess from mysore, who came with his brother and sold tie-dyed sheets and had a daughter who was home because of the heat. The puppet seller lady who made all the puppets by hand, and then colored them using her very special recipe.
By the time the gang had regrouped, I've spent about an hour and a half meeting strangers and learning about their family life. And I had a real good time. It seems that people do not throng at bazaars and markets only to sell stuff to foreigners, they also want to make a connection. They want to know what the rest of the world is like. And since I wasn't exotic enough for them, they were happy to talk about all the exotic things in their life.
And I didn't have to spend a single paisa to walk into their world.
