Does it say something about access if it so happens that I had never been to Khan Market before I entered politics? Those days, my social interactions in Delhi were confined to the more airy, circular corridors of Connaught Place, where the footfall is always more diverse. My first trip to the market happened during the 2014 election campaign. From Khan Chacha, the market’s popular kabab haunt in which a party colleague and I ended up, I was stunned to see a Land Rover driver confidently parking it on the wrong side of the alley and a family of four getting down from the vehicle with an armed body guard. I was confused: what were these rich and powerful people doing in these narrow lanes? I was too ignorant. I eventually moved to Delhi, only to find myself in Khan Market again and again. It’s the closest market for me with a bank and a pharmacy and it has a variety of restaurants for every occasion.
Now, I could call myself a keen observer at least, if not a critical insider of Khan Market. My regular visits to Delhi’s most stiff-lipped bazaar have made me an expert of sorts on its philosophy (yes, the market has come to command a set of unwritten rules over the years). One can divide my treatise further into two sections—rules shared with others, and exclusive rules. The understanding that traffic rules are meant to be broken in direct proportion to your car’s size or horsepower, that you abandon your car as soon as you enter the market and let the driver deal with the chaotic parking and that everything in this market costs double of other markets are all facts that could be shared by other places. The exclusives are more deeply ingrained: that the tribe of people driving their own hatchbacks are to be looked at from the corner of the ‘authentic’ Khan Marketeer’s eye in one swift movement of status judgement and that market vendors are to subtly inform you of their interest in you as a customer based on your attire and the brand of sunglasses you wear, is knowledge that one acquires only over time. Also, a shopkeeper considers it an insult if you ask the price of a commodity before putting it in the shopping bag—the onus of keeping in mind the fact that you are shopping in one of the most expensive commercial places in the world is upon you.