Chor-Bazaar: The Thieves Market

A table in the upstairs corridor of my home, holds a large, round, stainless steel alarm clock. It’s three stubby buttons protrude with no pretense at subtlety. This present from my husband’s favorite Uncle Nari was purchased in Mumbai’s Chor Bazaar (Chor is thief in Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati). The clock is dull at best, at worst, an eyesore. So why does it have such pride of place?

Located on Mutton street in Grant Road, the Thieves’ Market, a cramped series of nooks barely qualified to be called shops, is Mumbai’s flea market where one can find anything from gramophones to bronze statuettes, corroded tools and carved wooden screens. 

It’s where old film sets go to die.

Uncle Nari said that my husband had once (twenty years ago?) admired such a clock (something hubby does not recall). So, Uncle Nari hunted through Chor Bazar’s crooked rows of stores, each crowded with piles of oddities crammed upon shelves. He slogged back and forth over the muddy, smelly road in the monsoon, and bent to examine the hoard, with the sun beating down on his balding head. Uncle Nari was in his seventies. After this, how could the awful clock have anything other than a special place in our hearts?

The 1917 edition of Bombay Place-Names and Street-Names by Samuel Sheppard identifies it as: “Chor Gully. (From Suparibag Road to Government Gate Road.) Named so because it was a haunt of thieves in former times, Chor meaning ‘ thief ‘ in vernacular.” However, other sources claim that the street was named when a group of Englishwomen heard the bazar din and declaimed the “shohr” (noise). It’s possible that over time this morphed into Chor Bazaar, and also possible that this is an entirely fictitious account. 

Regardless, from the 1800s, this was a hub of commerce where used goods were traded. It was also where one might find treasures if one did not care about their provenance. 

How do I know this?

To answer, I must tell you about my father. In the 1960s, he served as a mechanic in a workshop that maintained foreign cars. These magnificent Mercedes vehicles were owned by the directors of TELCO (Tata Locomotive and Engineering Company). Now, while he was in charge, an expensive automobile came in for repair. With a large backlog of repairs, it was a couple of days before the vehicle was examined. And then, he discovered that the carburetor had been stolen! Since the vehicle could not have been driven in without that part, it was clear the theft occurred inside the workshop.

Foreign cars were not just expensive in the 1960s, Indian import duties made them valuable status symbols. Parts could not be imported for love or money. The loss of the carburetor was catastrophic for Dad’s career. 

Worse, the police considered him a suspect.

Working overtime, he returned home late each night, his nerves shredded from repeated interrogation and the fear of losing his job, his livelihood. To be dismissed under a cloud meant no one else would hire him. In desperation, he visited Chor Bazar repeatedly. At this point in the narrative, he used to say that he prayed often for help in his morning devotions. Everything seemed to be against him.

In Chor Bazar, some shops specialized in appliances, some in glassware, stoneware, bronze vessels and the like. Others were cluttered with corroded automobile parts. Dad said he searched so carefully through the assorted pieces that the vendor approached him. “What do you need?” he asked.

“A Mercedes carburetor,” Dad explained. “My boss’s car is busted.”

The vendor disappeared. About a half hour later, while Dad was still scrounging through the heavy car parts, the vendor returned with exactly the piece he needed. Dad would have needed to keep a straight face then, for he knew from its condition, that it was the stolen piece.

After haggling a bit, Dad leaned over the hunk and, out of sight of the vendor, marked it with a bit of chalk. 

Saying, “I’ll get the cash,” he departed.

He did return, this time in the company of a plainclothes policeman. The item was brought out, and the mark identified, whereupon the cop snatched up the thieves’ fence and demanded, “Where did this come from, hey? Who brought it to you?” 

Indian police are not a shy and retiring sort, so I rather believe some force was applied, and it succeeded in uncovering the culprit.

Dad was exonerated, of course. The tale of this derring-do and Dad’s faith in prayer was often repeated at our dining table. It fired my imagination, as a child, so when I finally ventured into Chor Bazar in Grant Road, I was a tad disappointed. Yes, there was a lot of stuff in wild disarray, but the colors of excitement were sadly missing in the chaos. It was a crowded flea market, a way to recycle antiques and junk equally, in a country where little is wasted and even used newspapers are sold by weight.

Yet in my mind’s eye, the thieves’ market looms large, a place of mystery and danger, a street filled with objects shorn from their owners, clustered together like orphans awaiting their parents’ glance. In Murder in Old Bombay, my character Captain Jim needs disguises, so he visits Chor Bazar and buys used clothes. There’s a nice bit of banter with a vendor. 

“Used clothes?” I asked the owner, a fat Sindhi, his lips stained red with betel nut.

Curious, he asked, “Yes . . . for who?”

Perhaps he took me for an Englishman. “My servant,” I said, “lost his on the train.”

“Stolen, no doubt. One should never sleep on a train,” said this vendor of the thieves’ market. He spat to one side, and beckoned me inside.

Captain Jim then proceeds to emulate his hero Sherlock Holmes, a master of disguise. He dresses successively as a Pathan, a dockworker, a beggar, and more, uncovering a heinous plot that exploits the most vulnerable members of society. In my fourth book in the series The Silversmith’s Puzzle, he returns to Colonial Bombay with his wife in order to save her brother from a murder charge. Once again, the colors of Chor Bazar blur into the excitement of the chase to create a deep and resonant picture, that is the charm of Old Bombay.