The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1921-05-05
BAZAARS OF INDIA

The day of the bazaar in India has
long passed without hope for any return
of its glory. Yet the visitor, in search of
novelty, may still be fairly well satisfied
with the results of the effort he must make
to see what remains of the curious life in
those places which are different from
everything in this land; their nearest par
allel being the French market in New Or
leans, or county fair, says the Christian
Science Monitor.
The stranger to India should take the
precaution to secure the services as a
guide and physical protector, one who is
conversant with at least half dozen of
the numerous dialects spoken in India's
commercial circles, and who-when it
comes to buying or rejecting-knows at
glance "a hawk from hernesshaw" be-
cause, as decidedly cynical Englishman
said, "Nine-tenths of the stuff displayed
in those Indian bazaars are spurious, and
the remainder utterly worthless rubbish"
An exaggeration, of course, yet it is hard
matter to find the few gems that may be
there; and, at any rate, if the purchas-
able inanimate is lacking, the almost end
less variety of the recumbent or animate
human denizens is rich reward for the
fatiguing hours in bazaar.
1t is a great pity that civilization is so
very inconsiderate toward the picturesque,
the stranger, and the racially attractive
Gin spite of its dirt) which are so diff
ferent from the life and the people we
know and are so tired of, their inartistic
dirt especially, that we often rush off to
the antipodes to find something artistic
and interesting. When we fail in our
search, we are apt to abuse the writers
who tell us-not what they really did see,
but what they had predetermined they
were to see.
1t is not many years since that the
bazaar at Delhi, to take at random one of
the many was truly wonderful place
1t occupied large extent of ground,
covered with all manner of ramshackle
buildings the ground floors of which were
open stalls. There were few fairly
broad thoroughfares which traversed the
section from side to side in serpentine
course, but the really interesting and at
tractive shops were reached by many mar
row, winding lanes, forming veritable
labyrinth, into which the unwary stran-
ger who ventured alone was quickly lost;
and when he betrayed his misfortune by
act or word, was sure to be bounced upon
by flock of human vutures bent upon
getting his last rupee in exchange for their
wares, and heartless as to whether or not
he got back to the meager civilization of
Delhi's then wretched hotel
In the main avenues there were-shall
we say canals, or streams, or bitches?
Well, there was something in whichever
we call them that possessed the motion of
liquid, and there was one, or perhaps two,
rows of discouraged trees. But in
the narrow alleys there was no Disgusting
the fact that those bitches were simply
open drains, usually so torpid in their
flow that the stencil was almost over
towering, and the visitor from abroad
wondered how any human being could
breathe the fetid air all day and all night
as complacently as did the bazaar deni-
zens.
Nevertheless, those were the days when
it was quite possible to pick up really
rare and precious bargains for song,
plaques hammered out from brass or other