Before landing in India I couldn’t imagine that I was going to live in a country so rich of traditions, spirituality and natural beauties. I think most of the travellers’ destinations are concentrated in the north where places like Delhi, the capital, and the Taj Mahal, attract hordes of tourists clicking their souvenir selfies. The south is much more “discrete” and I would say even more fascinating.
It happened to me to live in the capital of Karnataka, Bengaluru. It is considered the Silicon Valley of India today and it was the Garden City of India twenty years ago.
Nowadays cars and pollution have replaced most of the parks and rain-trees and Bangaloreans started to use umbrellas during the rainy days (don’t even try it during a monsoon storm) since the rain-trees’ wide foliage don’t form a continuous shelter along the streets anymore.
It was during a Monsoon rainy day that I visited for the first time one of my favourite places in Bengaluru, the Krishnarajendra Flowers market.
The setting was perfect, huge dark clouds in the sky, drizzle after a monsoon storm and a wet auto-rickshaw with a driver that was speaking any Indian language but English. And here we are, we reached the location and no market was there. So far, all normal.
As usual a bit of struggle is needed in India and when something is too easy to get, I seriously start worrying.
The entrance is next to a flyover and a huge intersection, therefore, first step: get off the auto, avoid the puddles and try to survive crossing the roads. A very useful tip I learned from locals is to look very secure, extend your arm with open palm toward the coming car (like a stop signal), walk slow and…hope it is your lucky day.
There is an open air market before the entrance and all around the Flower Market building (that's why it is a bit difficult to understand where to go). There the magic of colours reveals itself as a background of the shouting of the vendors. Goods are mainly on the ground on fabric clothes, on wood benches or on plastic fruit boxes. They are presented like the most beautiful and desirable item in the world. The clothes shading the market stalls diffuse a reddish light on the goods and they look even more inviting. The vendors put a lot of care in piling fruit and veggies like stone cairns, ordered by dimension or colour.
Colours, colours, and colours everywhere. And this is only the beginning, you still have to step in the flowers market!
The building is organised around a series of full-height atrium connected by stairs. The central spaces are used for selling flowers and the galleries for any kind of other good. It is easy to get lost especially because it is packed with people selling, buying, pocking around. If you don't walk, the flow of people will bring you forward anyway, a packed crowd pushing and shouting. It is not as bad as it sounds, it is definitely an experience, probably you don’t go there once a week to buy your living room’s table flowers, but it is for sure worth to go at least once.
The floor is very dirty, true, because everything is thrown on the ground (flowers and any kind of rubbish) but it is also very soft and you walk on this carpet, and imagine to be on a cloud of flowers. Just don't look down.
Cut flowers are used for many purposes of the daily life in India and this is why there are places like this for selling to individuals and wholesalers. Better to be prepared and forget the boutique flower markets you find in the West selling very expensive bouquets. What you should instead appreciate is how beautiful the flowers are. They are just perfect and you might think they are made with plastic or paper. They are piled, mistreated and thrown here and there carelessly but they are still soft and firm. Flowers are sold by metre when they are garlands or sold by kg when buds and put in plastic bags. The sellers seat on tables cross-legged and from there they close deals and do business. Their shops are around 2 x 2 m niche spaces, 1 m from the ground level. Bargain is loud and intense but Indians are usually very curious and kind with foreigners and it happened to me that a vendor stopped me offering me a Jasmine garland as a gift.
When you finally manage to climb the stairs and see the market from the top you can stand there forever looking at the chatting, selling, cutting, packing, bargaining, smiling. It is an explosion of hundred rainbows all together.
It is a real performance of ordinary life.
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