near him i buy eggs from a woman the name entally is a corruption of enayat ali beef and pork are not sold in any other municipal market he discarded the ripe green papaya i picked and chose another from the ones displayed on the tarpaulin he sat on who he was is lost in the mists of time they both close pretty early taltala by sundown and entally a couple of hours after unlike gariahat lake or behala which are open much later often till after 9 pm entally in 1923 park circus in 1927 lake in 1932 and gariahat in 1938 this is especially true of those markets that are close to sealdah railway station which serves as a conduit for the amazing variety of fresh produce available he was known for his extremely influential popular antiapartheid songs as i wait she loudly hails passing shoppers to check out her wares while giving me her opinions on how politics and the economy affects her calcutta has the distinct advantage of being served by market gardens surrounding it one of his most beautiful compositions is called african marketplace college street followed in 1913 accommodating vendors displaced by the construction of calcutta university the woman who sells only prawns of varying sizes has her husband shell and devein the ones i buy despite the serious lack of customer amenities and of upkeep and maintenance these markets rank high up on my shopping list while the bigger shops and stalls sell the more commonly bought produce it is the small vendor who has the more interesting and unusual items on offer i still vividly remember his solo performance some years ago in calcutta which though meagrely publicised resulted in a packed auditorium marketplace in which he sings of being smitten by a vegetable vendor is an enchanting but lesser known hit it comes as a surprise to learn it was originally named new market before they changed it to sir stuart hogg market in 1903 in honour of the man who was instrumental in having it built the malls and super stores have the same commonly bought most likely genetically modified commodities all year round regardless of season the kolkata municipal corporation has some 40 markets within its purview though there are around 350 informal ones scattered across the city this market along with new market and park circus are the only city markets which also have shops selling fish chicken mutton beef and pork all under the same roof so to speak once he had weighed it and told me the price he took a knife and sliced a part of the papaya open abdullah ibrahim a south african jazz pianist and composer called himself dollar brand early in his career when he fled the apartheid regime and moved to new york before returning to his country these markets have a characteristic different from markets in the south apart from this these daily bazars are radically different to the malls