The Mumbai/New York Photo Project: Meet the \'Wallas\'

While much has changed in New York and Mumbai over the past 50 years, the bazaar, or the marketplace, is still the center of commercial activity for both these cities.

In both these cities, the commercial capitals of their respective nations, you can get almost anything you want, at any time, day or night - as long as you know the right person to procure it, or “walla” in India. And in both cities, sometimes these wallas drive a hard bargain. In this edition of the Mumbai/New York photo project, Nisha Sondhe documents some of these marketplaces where products and services range from the brilliant to the bizarre.

In Mumbai, the wholesale flower market in Dadar, where one can buy flowers brought in rom all over Maharashtra and Gujarat, opens each morning at 4:30 and closes at 8 p.m. The market, under the overpass next to Dadar station, is a window into India’s thriving flower trade. The Chelsea flower district, a century-old institution in Manhattan, is hub for unusual flowers, exotic plants, vases and garden accessories. This market opens at 5 a.m. and is also best visited early in the day, when the produce is the freshest.

Crawford Market, established in 1869 by the first municipal commissioner of Mumbai, Arthur Crawford, is still the best place for wholesale bargains in the city.

The market, which is now called the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market, was in danger of being demolished a few years ago but was saved thanks to the efforts of conservationists. While the market is traditionally meant for wholesale fruit and vegetable trading, these days many stores are stocked with foreign goods like Camay soap, Kraft cheese, Fa deodorant or a pack of Pampers diapers.

Change is also under way at New York’s Chelsea Market, which specializes in gourmet food and is housed in a collection of industrial buildings that once was home to the National Biscuit Company, or Nabisco. In November, the owner of Chelsea Market, Jamestown Properties, an acquisition and management firm based in Cologne, Germany, and Atlanta, ignited public outrage when the city approved plans to add office towers to the landmark structure. Construction on the towers is scheduled to begin in 2015.

The market, which attracts approximately 120,000 visitors a week, sells products ranging fro fine foods and baked goods, to books, flowers and kitchen accessories.

Dhobi Ghat, a famous open-air laundry where dhobis (washerfolk) wash and dry clothes in full view of the public, is a source of much fascination for visitors to Mumbai. Rows upon rows of concrete wash pens come together to make the world’s largest outdoor laundry.

Meanwhile, laundromats in New York, while not as visually interesting, have their own inherent drama. They are places where “irregular things happen,” according to a New York Times article, and where people “flirt, debate, gossip, argue, break up, discover love, loiter, do business and just about anything else that can be squeezed into 27-minute heavy-soil cycles.” In the older apartment buildings in New York Cit! y, person! al washing equipment was often prohibited, and the city now has 2,654 self-service laundries to fulfill that need.

The act of washing clothes has inspired art as well. In 2011, a dhobi is one of the main characters in “Dhobi Ghat: Mumbai Diaries,” a 2011 movie directed by Kiran Rao, and a 1985 cable TV movie directed by Robert Altman, “Laundromat,” explored the drama that ensues when two women air out their dirty laundry.