Mumbai’s ‘Chor Bazaar’: An Era Gone By

India’s most profiled flea market is part of a face-lift plan which is more likely to erase its timeless ambiance.

Time stands deceptively still at Mumbai’s Chor Bazaar, the place to rush to for bargain street shopping. Deceptive because despite the calm, there’s anxiety in the air.

India’s most profiled flea market is part of a face-lift plan which is more than likely to erase its timeless heritage ambience. Moreover, prices may escalate to well beyond what is affordable for the bazaar’s bewildering variety of antiques, objets d’art, art deco furniture, vintage movie posters, chandeliers and faux Ming vases.

The Thieves’ Market, which sprung up during the pre-independence era, was a cacophonous marketplace called ‘Shor Bazaar’ which the city’s British residents mispronounced as ‘Chor Bazaar.’

The name stuck, gaining credence when a violin and fancy gewgaws stolen from a ship in which Queen Victoria sailed to India for a visit, were recovered there. Today, the bazaar is ‘legit’, even if dubious looking wrist watches, cellphones, car parts, keds and laptops have landed on chatais spread across the pavements.

Ask a clutch of vendors about where they get the stock and surprisingly they’re not offended. Instead, they respond politely with a, “Second hand maal hai, boss. Made-in China aur Bangkok goods bhi milega.”

Effort to Beautify?

My recce of Chor Bazaar is, in fact, to check out, the impact or the lack of it, of the Rs 4,000 crore Saifu Burhanuddin Upliftment project announced by the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim Trust last year in October.

Supported by Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, who was expected to fasttrack the project, the aim is to beautify the downbeat Bhendi Bazaar precinct. A section of the expansive Chor Bazaar falls into the project’s purview. The snag is that that there’s a sprawling, logic-defying area to re-invent. The Bohra community comprises approximately 70 percent of the neighbourood, while the Sunni Muslims form the rest of the demographic.

Neither of the sects is sure when redevelopment will commence at the marked-out sections of Chor Bazaar. The Abdullah family, which sells household plumbing parts, says cynically, “Who knows? It could take 20 years for the rebuilding work to begin here.”

Others like Zahid Mansoori, who runs a row of shops called Mini-Market, guesstimates a waiting period of “five to ten years.” Shops and home owners have been offered cushy sums of money, particularly for their nearby homes. The Abdullahs’ patriarch laughs, “Many of us here could become crorepatis, but who knows when? Till then, it’s business as usual.”

Exclusive Clientele

The narrow lanes are traffic-clogged but the shops aren’t being thronged. Ebrahim Abdul Ghani who displays rare collectibles explains:

I can’t say business is booming but most shops have a loyal clientele of industrialists, movie and sports stars. Their home designers source their material from us. Also we hire out chandeliers, cut-glass and porcelain props to movie art directors. At times, the props are returned damaged. The upside is that we are compensated.

According to old timers at Chor Bazaar, Shashi Kapoor’s late wife Jennifer Kendal, was a regular shopper, picking up lamps, furniture and leather-bound first editions of books. Their home in Atlas Apartments was so beautifully accessorised that Bollywood’s star wives also made a beeline to the shops.

Hysterical haggling is a must, a tradition which proves to be daunting for an European expatriate I see at a shop stacked with an assortment of lights used in the movies. Currently the unwieldy lights have become trendy in upscale homes. The expat wants one too, but is stymied when the salesman refuses to repair a few cracks. “Absurd, the policy is take it or leave it,” he huffs before storming out, glancing back to see if he will be recalled. He isn’t.

A busload of Chinese tourists arrives just then at the mouth of Chor Bazaar’s teeming Mutton Street. Shopkeepers accustomed to this ritual, shrug, “They’re only interested in taking selfies, not buying.”

Lost Old World Charm

The city’s stalwart historian, Rafique Baghdadi, describes the Thieves’ Market as “an Aladdin’s Cave which is in a state of flux.” As he guides me through a grid of lanes alleyways, he points out innumerable old structures which are about to be pulled down.

Quite curiously, a posse of security guards stops us from clicking photographs of an excavated site. A tea-shop owner still operating from the ground floor of a three-storey building– where most of the homes are tightly shuttered– won’t tell us its name till we discover the fading plaque of Mariam Manzil.

A century-old tea stall for taxi drivers and handcart pullers, close to the bazaar, has shut shop. Roadside cooks, known as bhatyaras rustling up koftas and kheema baida, have returned to their villages in UP and Haryana.

Meanwhile, the fasttrack appears to have slowed down perceptibly. The dream of becoming overnight crorepatis is still to be realised, by a sizeable section of the sellers of wallet-friendly memorabilia.

(The writer is a film critic, filmmaker, theatre director and a weekend painter.)