From the Temple Street night market in Hong Kong to the Southbank Centre weekend market in London, temporary open-air markets give cities across the world their unique cultural identity. These makeshift markets provide spontaneity and vibrancy to public spaces: Bangkok would not be the same without the Chatuchak market just as Mumbai would be incomplete without its Colaba market. Many of these markets only appear weekly or for a few hours daily, enabling vendors to afford the rents on a time-sharing basis.
Indian cities have long been made up of such flexible, multi-functional and informally organized spaces. The architecture of these temporal spaces spans time and their urban fabric is not an outcome of city planning, but a gradual and organic process of design by the people themselves. These hafta, or weekly markets, form an integral part of the Indian urban experience, selling everything from shoes to furniture at affordable rates. The Daryaganj Sunday book market in Delhi is one of the most well known and loved of such markets where you can spend hours immersed in books by authors from Rowling to Rushdie, Tolkien to Twain, all stacked up on the pavements of Old Delhi on Asaf Ali and Netaji Subhash Roads.
