Getting Groceries

Everybody eats. Unless you live on a self-sustaining farm, chances are you go outside to buy your foodstuffs. And you can learn so much about a country and culture through their food -- if you can buy it first.

India is both ancient and modern in many respects, including in its food.  You can easily go to a modern market to buy food or buy from a vendor at a street stall or one who will conveniently come down your street so all you have to do is come out the door to buy.

The modern grocery store offers a shopping experience that I'm most used to - minus the people who will cut to the front of the line (it's a cultural thing that I just don't get and it either irks me or makes me laugh at their shameless brazenness) because they only want to buy one thing and the cashier will either tell them to go back to the end of the line or ring up their item. At hypermarkets, (think Super Walmart or a Target with a full groceries section), you can get both packaged food items, fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products, eggs, clothes, shoes, housewares, personal care items; the list goes on and on.  In Jodhpur, the major hypermarket is Smart Bazaar which doesn't sell any meat. I think it's mostly because many people here are vegetarian because in a hypermarket called Spencer's in Noida (near Delhi), they sold meat, albeit in a completely separate section far away from the other items.

So if you want meat here in Jodhpur, you can go to a butcher's shop which serves as an abattoir or slaughter house for chickens (thank you All Creatures Great & Small for teaching me this new word!). I've seen the chicken in cages before being cut up in the back.  It's not a pleasant sight and the smell is even less so. Needless to say, I'm not brave enough to buy meat at the butcher's shop, so all the meat I get, I order from restaurants.  The (spoiled, city-dwelling) American in me wants there to be no connection between the chicken that goes 'cluck' and the chicken that you dunk in Chik-fil-a sauce.  They are parallel lines and will never, ever meet. Though I will say that the best chicken I ever had was in Lagwa, Nigeria that was freshly slaughtered in front of me and oh so delicious. You can also buy cheap eggs at the same poultry/butcher shops.  As a fair warning, you'll need to clean the eggs if you want to be rid of all the chicken droppings. Fortunately, I found a shop that is relatively clean and the eggs don't have as much poo on them.

If you live in a bigger city, or a more connected city, you can order meat and other groceries from online.  Some companies are BigBasket, JioMart, and yes, even Amazon.in. But if you want to go to a market that isn't massive and that doesn't sell everything under the sun, you can go to a regular market, or grocery store.  These are smaller and tend to sell a lot of 'foreign' products or other specialty items.  They remind me a lot of Whole Foods and, just like Whole Foods, you can expect to pay a little more. But sometimes, you just need to have a taste of home or normalcy no matter the cost.  There's a chain near me called Fresh 'N Green that sells exotic fruits and vegetables like plums, blueberries, zucchini and lettuce! 

As you can see, you can go to stores and easily buy the things you're used to in a way that you're used to like back at home.  But if you want to go for an authentic experience, you can buy from a street stall.  Along side some roads, you'll find stands with fruits and veggies lined up in neat, colorful stacks. They are usually very affordable and of decent quality (we have these stands too in Philly, like in my neighborhood at Haverford Ave & Master St). I've personally found them to be better and fresher than in the hypermarkets, on par with the Whole Foods-like grocer Fresh 'N Green. You can pay with cash or with the UPI electronic payment.  And if someone tells you an exorbitant price (one lady tried to get over on me with a price that was way more expensive than Fresh 'N Green so I just scoffed and walked away), there are plenty of other vendors available, usually in close proximity, so you can take you business elsewhere because you don't have time for foolishness and dishonesty.

And if you want to really feel a genuine Indian experience, and if you live a neighborhood that is not cordoned off to tourists or the rich, you'll hear the vendors walking around with their carts yelling out in a sing-song fashion "Sabziiii, Sabziii!" (vegetables, vegetables!). Some of them will even have an audio recording that plays and will call out all the vegetables or fruit they sell. All you have to do is come out of your door when they come by and buy what you need. They will come around throughout the day, from early in the morning to late in the evening, well after dark too.   It's very convenient for the housewife or grandma who is home all day caring for the kids and home.  Or for a recluse like me that sometimes thinks 'I don't feel like dealing with India today'.

But if all else fails, and you managed to not have any food in the house, or you're too overwhelmed with the prospect of cooking an Indian dish, you can always order dinner from Zomato or Swiggy.