Teen darwaja

Dimensions That Sell

The teen Darwaja or “the THREE Gates”, is the source to a very crowded, active, dense, market place of Ahemdabad. It opens up to a huge arcade of shops and sub streets of shops selling a huge variety of items that a person would seek. The shops are lined up on both sides of the road and act as magnets to enthusiastic shoppers. In some areas it opens up into a maze of more shops where people can easily get lost into. I have been there a couple of times to get materials for my projects at a cheaper rate as compared to the shops in other places of Ahmedabad. There is something there that keeps on changing but on the whole it has been the same since the last 100 – 150 years. Is it because of the changing of the shop owners, or the customers or the types of items that are being sold or is it the changing dimensions of each shop or the increasing number of shops to accommodate the necessities of today’s contemporary and globalized world or is it entirely something that is beyond measurable.

As the name suggests one can enter the market place from any one of the three gates. There are almost 7-8 shops that circumscribe the gate on the right. The shops sell the usual stuff like hairbands combs etc but as I went inside there were shops or rather vendors that sell jewelry, fake jewelry of course otherwise the shop won’t be so small and open! These stalls open to a very narrow street with stalls selling the same thing. Most of them have no constructed dimension. The owner very smartly or to be frank forcefully adjusted and arranged his items on just one wall. The street is so wide that only two people can fit in i.e. the shopkeeper and the customer! One of them has to make way for other people who wish move through that street.

Seeing the length of the main road of the teen darwaja and the curiosity to find out what other items are there to be look for, a person like me wouldn’t want to go deeper into the sub streets and rather continue

walking along the main road. For some people the dimension of these sub streets are so small and the relative densities are so high that people especially who come there for the first time usually wouldn’t want to enter these streets thinking they might have the possibility of getting lost easily.

As I kept walking on the main road, the whole road seemed to be around 10m wide, but it was loaded with so many activities that the visible width of the road is almost zero. The center of the road was occupied by a line autorichshaws waiting to drop back tired customers back to their abodes.

Behind this line of autorichshaws there are small shops that sell nimbu pani or fast food or other things to energize the tired customers so that they can continue shopping. And then the width terminates into the shops. On the left hand side of the road there are shops that sell commodities made of plastic. There are around 4-5 shops that sell plastics. The shops next to them sell different types and sizes of threads and ropes.

For every shop on the left there are 2-3 shops on the right for the same distance. This difference can be noted because of the type of commodity that is being sold in these shops. Or it could be the other way round.

These shops required little area so they automatically grew on the right side of the teen darwaja.

As I kept walking a line of shops selling bags and purses started. And I took a turn and entered into a very a different space. It was as if I entered a world of purses and bags. There was an arcade of shops that sold just bags. The space was quite dark as compared to the main road. The shops are situated on the ground floor of a 4 storied building so in the absence of the shops the space would have looked so private. But the yelling of the shopkeeper that they sell the best and cheapest bags, the aunties shouting back at them to bargain, the footsteps of people and everything doesn’t make the space look so dark and private but gives the sense of a public space which opens to a large open space i.e. the main road.

Further ahead the road splits into three, one street has shops selling only toys and gift items and hence it is named “The ramakda gali�. The road continues like a river to form small clusters of shops selling the same thing. And finally the road blends into the old city.

Like all other normal and ideal shops, the boundaries of these shops are not defined by the dimension of the brick or steel frame that they are made up of but it is defined by their items and customers that come and surround these shops with a hope that they will get what they are searching for or they may encounter something that really fascinates them. The shops proudly extend out their items towards these customers.

The Teen Darwaja market is said to be around 100- 150 years old and that this was the only market place for the surrounding villages. This was a market place where people used to come and buy things for different occasions and functions, and it provided everything a person a needs on a single street.

Consider an example where there is a shop which is really big and the products are fitted properly according to its volume, but if there are almost negligible no. of customers visiting the shop, then the shop seems to be really small. On the contrary, there is a shop with volume accommodating only a single person, but there is a huge crowd around it wanting the product of that shop then the volume of the shop seems really big in comparison to its physical dimension. Therefore the teen Darwaja or any market anywhere in the world consists majorly of these three components: the customers, the shopkeeper and the product that he/she sells. And it is these factors that affect its dimensions.