Lajpat Nagar Market

I finally spent time in Lajpat Nagar today. Strangely enough, despite having been in Delhi for years now, it's one market I'd never been to, and now, having gone there, I'm not regretting not having been to it before.

It's one of those strange, very Delhi-ish markets markets where you not only need a lot of time, but where you also need an insane amount of patience: there are some interesting things in the market but for every one interesting thing, there are a hundred pieces of unqualified rubbish.

At the moment, it looks like leggings appear to be in fashion, and I lost count of the number of roadside shops which sell them for a hundred rupees each. There are also a lot of places where one can buy kurtas for a hundred rupees each too. I think the possibility of buying things without spending too much money is standard in Delhi, but after one spends a while in the city, and the thrill of being able to buy something for "just Rs. 100" wears off, one starts to look a little more closely at the quality of the wares available for a hundred rupees, and question whether they are actually good buys.

That's the stage I'm now at, so I didn't wind up buying any hundred-rupee clothes, and though the market has "showrooms" of various brands too, there isn't very much in many of the showrooms -- perhaps because most people are out buying cheaper things. Also, almost everything in Lajpat Nagar is very loud and garish.

I went into a watch shop just to have a look around and there was not one piece in the shop which I would even have considered wearing. Holding up a watch -- the least loud one in the shop -- with a red and silver streaked strap, the salesperson informed me that it was "simple and sober". He only smiled when I told him that it didn't look either simple or sober to me.

There are people I know who rave about the market, it's possible that they know of shops in the market which I completely missed. Or that they're actually looking for very cheap clothes which they can wear a few times and then junk. That wasn't quite what I had in mind though so I wound up sticking to convenience and grocery stores.

I left with clothes pins which I'd been planning to buy for months but had never got around to picking up.