Today at Dadar

Freni and I went to Dadar today, to cook up a new Dadar Bazaar Walk. My camera was out of battery, so here's what I managed to click on my Nokia E90 phone.

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At Phule covered market - crabs for sale.

There were mussels, dried fish, bombil, and all sorts of other fishy treasures on sale. The fisherwomen as usual, had tongues as sharp as their curved fish knives. I was asked if I wanted to hold a live crab. My hurried refusal led to much merriment.

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Resting after the day's sale. Note the green and maroon khun!

Outside the covered market - Goddess in Finery (Someone please, please tell me what's going on with the coconut + eyes + jewellery + new clothes thingy. I'm dying to know. Is this Lakshmi? Durga? Some other Devi? )

Another stall - the Goddess obviously has a thing for bright colours! Lots and lots of women were buying things from these stalls. We asked them, but got incomprehensible answers. "It's for puja", they said. All I gathered was that there was a festival this month.

I call him The Yam Accountant.

She was concentrating on making a "veni" - flowers for the hair

Plastic covers for computers and television sets - So it's not just Goddesses who like bright things! I always enjoy seeing how the Indian love for colours transforms even practical things into a feast for the eyes. Near the plastic covers, green bangles (favoured by married women) are stacked in a basket in sets of twelve. The other side of the basket, by the way, had bangles in a deep red.

We stopped for lassi and snacks at a nearby restaurant. I had misal-pav, a brilliant Maharashtrian invention that doesn't get the press it deserves. Misal is a tangy spicy dish, eaten with bread. In my hurry to eat it, I forgot to click a photo, but if you want to see what misal is like, there's a great photo here. The most satisfying part of the misal is when you dunk the last of your chunky bread into the last of the gravy, and polish it all off with a final tasty mouthful.

Sigh. I'm quite certain now. I've inherited my mother's irresistible attraction for marketplaces.