Flower Power at a Mumbai Market - 14 mar

If Mumbai’s fumes have left you craving a whiff of nature, take a walk through the Dadar flower market, where you can inhale the sharp scent of marigolds and glimpse the immensity of India’s flower trade.

Every morning, blossoms are picked from the fields of Gujarat and Maharastra and are rushed to flower-hungry Mumbai, where they are sold under the overpass by Dadar Station. On a recent visit, a vendor named P. Kumar pulled a chain of rose petals and small white jasmine blossoms from a cane basket. One meter 3.28 feet of the chain, which women like to wear in their hair, is 15 rupees (or 33 cents, at 45 rupees to the dollar), and, if he sells the whole basket — his complete inventory for the day — he’ll make up to 300 rupees. It’s a small operation, but there are hundreds of small vendors like Mr. Kumar who sell here, or who buy from the wholesalers at the market and fan out across the city.

“Do you have flower markets like this in America?” another vendor asked. Not really: These flowers serve both decorative and religious purposes. You can order flowers woven in a net to throw over a newlywed’s car, or an arch made of flowers as a backdrop for a conference hall, or dense garlands to drape around photographs. You can buy thin tulsi leaves to lay at the alters of Krishna and Vishnu, or bundles of durva grass for elephant-headed Ganesha, or poisonous knobs of dhatura — which look like pale-green spiny anemone — to pound into a paste for Shiva. Or you can buy a bouquet of roses for someone you like.

The Dadar flower market opens at 4:30 a.m., begins to close at 8 p.m., and is busiest during the festivals of Divali and Ganpati, and daily at rush hour.

via Globespotters

Posted by por AMC on 16:28. Filed under uma janela para o mundo . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Feel free to leave a response