TABLE
OF CONTENTS
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Class
Markets in South India
Jessica Von Wendel
Ta Nagar is
the place to go if you want something cheap in Chennai, India. I thought, well I’m in India shouldn’t that be the case just about anywhere? What
I didn’t realize was the range of
contrasts that this
one country
possesses even on the marketplace scale. In
Sara Dickey’s book Cinema
and the Urban
Poor in South India, she states that “of all the
forms of identity in urban South India,
socioeconomic class is one of the
most salient.” I found this class identity
most notable in
my comparison of markets used by the wealthy and those frequented by
the poor. As
I walked around the Ta Nagar market, street vendors called out to bring
me closer
to their stalls selling primarily women’s clothing. Shirts and tops of
all
colors swayed in the breeze and provided a stark contrast to the muddy
brown of
the streets. The vibrant pinks, oranges,
reds and yellow fabrics popped up out of the muck like a lotus flower
appears
from beneath the muddy waters. The
people at this market are local, everyday people. There
aren’t many tourists; in fact in the
seven hours I spent here I only saw one. Primarily
middle aged women walk the streets. Many
walk alone or perhaps with a
friend. The clothing shops are selling
saris and tunic sets that are a wash of color. Yet,
I couldn’t ever get lost in the color because I was
brought back to
reality as someone dressed in muddy torn clothes grabbed at my arm. A beggar looks straight into me and gives the
universal gesture of touching their fingers to their lips to ask for
money. This is the India I expected: the
contrast of
color and poverty.
The India
I didn’t expect was at
another market only fifteen minutes away. The
Spencer Plaza is an equivalent to any mall you would
find in America. A domed ceiling crowns the central space as
well-dressed shoppers walk about. In
this air-conditioned interior no one is sweating from the unbearable
heat like
at the outdoor market. Here I was
surprised to see a larger number of young men walking in groups and
fewer older
women. Still the shops were primarily
selling women’s clothing and jewelry. Yet
no one was really shopping. In fact, the
only people carrying bags of purchases were
the other
Semester at Sea students I ran into, which was at least thirty. As I walked around in air-conditioned bliss,
I realized why so many of my fellow Americans flock to this style of
market. It is familiar.
The Indians selling from these shops seem
more trustworthy than the guys trying to sell you a skirt off the back
of a cart
in the street. Because it is westernized
this market must be reliable. Ironically,
the same tactics used by the sales people on
the streets are
utilized in this enclosed market. Just
as on the streets in Ta Nagar, the men working in the shops at Spencer Plaza stand outside in the main
hallway
and call out for you to “just take a look.” Only
here they expect to have American visitors and made
professional
signs welcoming the Semester at Sea students and offering us a twenty
percent
discount. I could only laugh as I saw
the exact same skirt I had bought off the street of the outdoor market
in Ta
Nagar going for 100 rupees more than what I had paid.
While I
expected to see the
microscopic contrast of color vibrancy juxtaposed against the grime of
poverty
in the street markets, which is iconic of India, I was the most
surprised by
this macroscopic difference of class identity that Sara Dickey observes
and
that I saw in the differences between these two separate markets
situated side
by side. My experiences in the two
markets suggests that these broader variances are often overlooked
because the markets
have an exclusivity to them that restricts shopping to certain classes
and thus
provides no obvious distinction within the market itself. Only by comparing the two markets against each
other are the two worlds of India
revealed. The distinct environments
designed for the targeted class of consumer in these two markets is yet
another
way that the citizens of India
are divided along class and caste boundaries. The
environments encourage division, but the processes of
both product
exchange and human interaction remain universal.
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