A woman weighs beans for her customer. As vegetable markets go, this is the biggest one I have seen in Mizoram. Most other towns had smaller yards. I will post on those next. In Aizawl, the vegetable market operates in a large, rectangular basement of a market. Step into the basement and you see concrete stilts and platforms where the sellers sit. From where I entered, the vegetable section was the first at hand.
Walk down that section and you come to a deserted part of the basement.
At its end, close to the basement's edge, a small eatery.
Turn right here and you enter the meat section.
It was evening. Business was winding down.
Keep walking and you leave the meat section behind and enter the fruits section. This lady, whose shop had sour juices from a local fruit called – I am not sure of the spelling – Hatghora and several other condiments. And she was sitting there knitting. After I photographed her, she pointed at the two women sitting before her, telling me to photograph them as well.
These two were selling mangoes, apples and grapes. The younger girl knew hindi. She had injured her hand while trying to kill a rat.
Step out of the yard and you will see a small group of women selling fish.
The road to the right sells a lot of things. A woman, and several youngsters, were walking around carrying small, shallow boxes with SD cards. A bunch of shops were selling clothes. Some shops had the clothes dangling from hangers. Yet others, selling clothes in all likelihood imported en masse from China, had large clumps of clothes spread out in tarps on the road itself.
And, in the middle of all this, a bunch of (mostly) women selling vegetables and other leafs used for cooking. This is, incidentally, one of the most striking things about Mizoram – the number of women you see at work. In this yard, for instance, there are hardly any men at work.
On walking a bit more, I saw another part of the yard. Towards the road, it had a few shops selling cut pieces of watermelon.
Behind them, the spices section. Somewhere here, there is also a section which sells local tobacco. I missed seeing that.
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