On 14th April 2017 we reached our service apartment at around 1 o'clock. On the way, we saw a vegetable market, which made our health happy and it was decided that vegetables would be bought from this vegetable market in the evening.
We were exhausted from the exhaustion of the long journey. So we spent the first day relaxing, drinking tea and sitting on the lawn looking at the rice fields. Putu told us that tomorrow is the biggest Hindu festival on the island of Bali. So he will come a little late the next day. We didn't mind because we too had to retire from our daily routine and prepare our meals by ten thirty in the morning. Putu gave us a two wheeler scooter so that we can go wherever we want to go.
Unique world of flowers
In the evening, Vijay and I, taking Putu's two wheeler scooter, reached the same vegetable market to buy vegetables and milk, which we had seen in the morning while coming to Mangvi. It was the adjacent area of Pura Taman Ayun Temple. It was another shocker time for us. There was no vegetable market, only flower pots and shops, which we had mistook for green vegetables in the morning. Flowers of many kinds, flowers of many colors. There are flowers all around. Dozens of flowers made from bamboo splints were adorned along with naturally occurring flowers. All these flowers had come to be sold by Hindus to be used in the big festival of the next day. The market was crowded but nothing compared to the crowd in India. Many people came to buy flowers with their families. They used to buy flowers, bargain, but there was no debate, no one was speaking loudly. People were laughing among themselves but a complacency was present.
Those women shopkeepers of fruit and vegetable market
There was a narrow lane adjacent to the flower market, on going which we actually saw a fruit and vegetable market. In this market small shops were built like in India and wooden hand carts could also be seen. We were happy to see that there were many types of fruits present but we were also sad to see that vegetables were very few. There were apples but forty to fifty thousand rupees a kg i.e. two hundred to two and a half hundred rupees a kg in Indian currency. There were bananas but a banana for four thousand rupees. That is, a banana worth twenty rupees in Indian currency. I used to sweat just hearing the expressions in thousands. Although there was some relief by calculating in Indian currency, but all fruits and vegetables were very expensive compared to India.
Some stalls had vegetables in which potato, onion, bottle gourd, cabbage, brinjal and pumpkin were the main ones. Some vegetables were of local nature, whose names we cannot remember even after asking. We have completely failed to know how they could be used. Because all the shopkeepers, who were 100% women, did not know a single letter of English. They tried to explain to us by showing us weights and rupees, how much money we would have to pay for how many vegetables. Wherever we stopped, women from nearby shops would also come up to us. She wanted to see and hear how we buy vegetables, understand them and how we speak!
Seeing those women selling vegetables, it was easy to know that they are very poor, poorer than Indian vegetable sellers. Even though not a single word was being spoken by her, but her voice and face was telling us that she was happy to have us among her and wanted to talk to us under some pretext. We somehow bought potatoes, onions and tomatoes and decided to come the next morning and buy fresh vegetables.
Dogs that recognize foreigners
Although it was only seven o'clock in the evening, but it was very dark, we returned. By the time we reached the service apartment, it was a dark night. Although it was only half past seven. On the way, we also felt the fear that no one might attack us knowing we were foreign and insecure. Although nothing of the sort happened. Yes, those dogs of Mangvi village recognized us again and started barking. The dogs eyes were clearly threatening us that we know you're a foreigner, so stay in your apartment, don't move around. I remembered that in India also street dogs bark at foreign tourists in the same way. It was too awkward to even think of foreign words for myself.