Small Cuts, Big Realisations
Finding perspective in the chaos of Sunday markets
“Arey bhai! Don’t you understand Bengali? I told you to make bigger cuts,” I begrudgingly told my butcher in Hindi.
“I made that only,” the butcher replied in Bengali.
I sighed and moved on, vowing never to come back to that crowded meat shop again. I had a good “Hi/Hello/How are you?” rapport with the people working at the local meat shop. But this was it — the boiling point. How could they botch my order three times in a row!
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On weekends, especially Sundays, I like to go for a long run in the evening or take a long walk. Afterwards, I often stop by the nearest chicken shop to buy chicken. I do batch cooking, so Sunday evenings are perfect for experiencing the runner’s high, doing some cooking, and preparing for the dreadful Monday morning.
The chicken shop I mentioned is my regular spot. I get my chicken there, and they usually make the cuts as I want. But I have been noticing something unusual on Sundays — the cuts are smaller, even after repeated requests. I started wondering why.
The next long walk helped me connect the dots.
The part of town where I live is undergoing a massive overhaul. High-rises are being built—even South India’s tallest building, apparently. So there are many workers in the area. On Sundays, the area fills with temporary vegetable markets and many other smaller shops. While walking around, I often notice the chaotic yet fascinating scenes.
There are luxury cars like Mercedes C-class, BMW, Lexus, and Mini Coopers moving around the area. Then there are pigs and cows nearby, roaming freely. Sometimes they block the road; sometimes they wander far away. Among everything, hundreds (if not thousands) of people crowd the roads for their weekly shopping.
The construction workers, after a long week, crowd the meat shops and vegetable markets. They generally prefer smaller cuts when it comes to chicken pieces. So when I arrive at the meat shop around 6 or 7 PM, I become an outlier. The butcher’s brain is wired to make smaller cuts. Even my repeated requests fail to register.
After realising this, I stopped going to the shop on Sunday evenings and haven’t faced any issues since.
The area’s transformation kinda explained everything. There was a whole spectrum of people navigating this changing neighbourhood. I was somewhere in the middle: not wealthy enough to buy premium cars or demand premium service everywhere, but privileged enough to have specific preferences about my chicken cuts. The temporary Sunday markets were serving the community that sustained these businesses day-to-day. The butcher’s muscle memory was tuned to their preferences after cutting hundreds of pieces the way they wanted. I was just an occasional interruption in their Sunday routine.
This whole experience made me think about perspective and how the same reality can look completely different depending on where you stand. It reminded me of that Vir Das sketch about coming from ‘two Indias’ - the left/liberals went gaga over his video while the right/conservatives hated it. (Though it covered a wide range of topics)
I saw poor service and grew frustrated, but the butcher was efficiently serving his primary customer base, and hence my request in between wasn’t that important. Same shop, same moment, two completely different Indias.
At the end of the day, lived experiences and a little introspection make us aware of circumstances.
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Ordinary thoughts, shared with hope. Pass it along if it resonated.