A Visit to the Market
Of Glimpses into Daily Life.
I headed to the marketplace as I had an errand to run: buy vegetables. First, I collected a cloth bag, one of many I have accumulated, that is ubiquitous now because plastic bags are banned.
There was a wide variety of shops on either side of the street selling clothes, flowers, groceries, bags, shoes, spices, ghee, and yogurt. The sharp scent of fresh ginger filled the air, with neatly stacked, pre-skinned ginger pieces and bottled garlic paste waiting on carts to be chosen.
It was approaching dusk and the street lights were just beginning to come on as people swarmed the place.
Shops on the sidewalk, with bright lights displayed their fine pieces of cloth trying to lure passersby into buying their goods. From the street, a bylane emerged and disappeared into nothingness.
The smell of fresh fruit and vegetables filled the air, and so did the smell of rotten fruits and castaway goods that lay littered around waiting to be cleared.
Small hills of flowers were carefully arranged on the carts of competing vendors lined up in a row - white, pink, red, and yellow roses, fragrant jasmine, long-stemmed white flowers, and white and yellow chrysanthemums. This riot of colors and fragrant scents never failed to entice me to buy some.
A narrow space was left in the center for people to move around and to let the cyclists and the odd car pass through.
I could hear children bawling as their parents engaged in selling their goods and paid no attention to them. Were they hungry or was it the atmosphere that made them cry?
Voices of the vendors rented the area as they advertised loudly trying to convince the would-be buyers of the superiority of their goods.
Somewhere in the background, I heard temple bells ring, and mingled with that sound was the sound of car horns blaring in the distance.
A lone cyclist tried unsuccessfully to clear his way through the crowd. Finally, he got down and pushed his bike through and on reaching the main street, got onto his bike again and sped away.
People thronged the place from all sides, in the melee, I was jostled forward to a fruit vendor’s stall and there, I found two gentlemen earnestly discussing the origins of a mango. The onlookers started to form sides and the debate renewed with increased vigor.
Amused, I turned away to another stall where a middle-aged woman stood with hands on her hips demanding her money back from the vendor while her young son looked on bewildered.
The vendor protested in vain that he had not received any money but she was adamant. With a resigned shrug, he handed her the money she wanted, and taking it she grabbed her son's hand pulling him along.
The man, sore from his loss, turned his wrath on his son who quickly made a disappearing act.
Eleven-year-olds scampered about running after couples trying to induce the guys to buy flowers for their partners. More often than not, they succeeded and walked away with childish grins, clutching the few coins they earned.
I glanced at my watch, night had descended and I hadn’t even noticed.
I quickly made my purchase and moved away from the hustle-bustle of the crowd, but it seemed, as though the crowd moved with me for the sounds accompanied me.
That night, solitude meant being alone in a crowd.
Very nice work! The examples of AI imaging vis a vis imaginative writing are excellent. You show how AI “art” is actually spillover from the meaning embedded in the text. I’m not sure philosophically why this use of AI seems to be an extension of the writer more than an addition from another medium (a “real” photo snapped by a human finger or a sketch drawn by a human hand). But I admire your bravery in taking up this experiment and encourage others to try it. I’m going to adopt your method of contextualizing AI imagery I use on my poetry—providing info about what words were used to generate the visual.
Very nice piece of writing and interesting use of AI images ... (also great read for advanced English language students to improve their writing styles and range of vocabulary).