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On the wee hours of a December Friday, I found myself de-boarding on to a deserted platform at the Sandhurst Road station. I was coming into the island city from the eastern suburbs on the first morning local (train) – the city’s exhausted public transport system. As I climbed up to the main platform deck, I was joined by a throng of commuters and together, we emerged out on the western gate of the station and waited, as a line of kaali-peelis (cabs painted in black and yellow) pulled up to us as drivers called out destinations – ‘Chor Bazaar’, ‘Do tanki’, ‘Dongri’! I squeezed myself into the backseat of an old Fiat Padmini with three other people and as the middle-aged driver revved up his engine, Mohd. Rafi blasted out of his fine-tuned speakers. Given, the odd hours, the traffic was bare minimum and in no time, I reached Do Tanki, where I got off and waited for Anjali, my tour guide for the morning. It was around 4:10 am when Anjali, dressed in a pink salwar kameez with a red dupatta tightly wrapped around her head and face, made her appearance. I had met Anjali through an NGO with who I worked on a community development project. Anjali, a 20-year-old girl from Kamathipura had been a great resource person for us in navigating the field of study and had become a fast friend. It was she, who offered to take me around the rather infamous, night markets of Old Bombay. As she tightly clasped on to her dupatta, hiding two-thirds of her face, we entered Kamathipura, the red-light district of the old city, though most of the soliciting work now was carried out only in the 13th lane of the district yet the area had its reputation and it was not at all desirable for two young girls to be seen roaming the streets at such a time. The night market stretched from the first to the third lane finally converging on to an open public ground. The sellers laid most of their wares out by the side of the streets, on blue tarpaulin sheets laid on the ground. Their wares mostly comprised of footwear of different kinds and makes – sports shoes, sandals, formal shoes, loafers made in canvas or leather featuring logos of popular global brands! Back in the days, shoes and chappals picked up from various religious precincts like temples and mosques across the country found their way to this market. However, the market, today is teemed with locally made counterfeit goods or export reject surplus items getting sold at dirt cheap prices starting at 100 rupees a pair. It is said that if luck favours, one can actually go back home with an original pair of Clarks or Ted Baker (with of course defects but minuscule for a human eye to detect), dispensing only a few hundred bucks from one’s pockets! Along with footwear sellers, there were also a number of vendors selling electronic goods – from iphones to speakers to fitbits to whatnots, at one-third the price! While the authenticity of these goods were highly debatable, yet these sellers seemed to be attracting many customers! By 4:30 am the market was gathering a crowd as it got difficult to move around without running into one another and the air grew thick with noises of buyers haggling with the sellers. Majority of the buyers were young and middle aged men; workers in the city or in the nearby towns who were looking to cut the best of the deals; few of the buyers were traders themselves who would purchase these items in bulk from here and sell them off at far flung towns and villages at double the price. We went about checking out the various wares at display, occasionally enquiring on their price and quality until the market was started closing down by 7:30 am when we walked out to the main street and ended our tour by having a heavy early breakfast at one of the many old Iranian cafes at Null Bazaar, a grease-laden keema pav and a sugar laced chai each!