Sameer seems to have discovered the kisaan mandis recently: he's on a twitpic spree of late. That made me go back and think about my days in Chandigarh, and the mandis.
If you've never been there, it's very difficult to describe them. In all the other places I've stayed at ( and there've been quite a few), there's absolutely nothing like them.
The kisaan mandi is basically a travelling mandi: on different days of the week, it goes to different sectors in the city. Spreads out over a large ground, very well organised into a grid, with two sections: one sitting on the ground, another on thelas.
The experience shopping in these mandis is fantastic. Shopping for veggies and fruits in all other places in India is pathetic by comparison. Everything is very fresh, and quality is very high: one can blindly pick up any pieces, unlike other places where one has to carefully pick and choose each individual piece. In fact, for some vegetables, the vendors won't allow you to pick and select, and you don't mind it!
You'd wonder why I'm getting so excited about something as mundane as vegetable shopping, but it is so good. Every week, we would come back with a couple of big cloth bags completely full, and would run out before the week was over. Later, in Noida and Mumbai, we would buy half, and would still last more than a week.
The freshness, quality and variety on offer made sure we ate quite a bit of the wholesome food. Unfortunately, that no longer happens with us, and I hate going veggie shopping now.
Longing for Chandigarh now... there were so many things perfect about it. Sigh...
