This vital market in South Vancouver, named for the ancestral region of the city’s large Sikh population, is no tourist trap. Rather, it’s a genuine ethnic market, extending along Main Street between East 48th Avenue and East 51st Avenue. Except for a Filipino food store, it’s a solid and genuine bit of Little India, complete with sidewalk stalls and a fair amount of (not off-putting) disorder.
The market is known for its fabrics and six-yard saris in fact, it’s the largest fabric market in British Columbia. Stores range from the teeming Guru Bazaar (6529 Main Street, 604-327-4422), which carries imported fabrics and clothing from the tacky to the luxurious. It also stocks heaps of popular “mink blankets” actually a poly¬ester plush — on themes that run to (presumably) Indian tigers and African zebras.
Step into Raj Collections (6647 Main Street, 604-322-0250) and you will find glamorous women’s garments in earthy, postmodern colors designed for the wealthy trendsetters of Bombay or Delhi, and this Indian diaspora. This place has an upscale attitude — with a capital A.
Interspersed with the clothing, video, and music shops are jewelry stores selling cheap glitter by the truckload, or ultra-ornate necklaces and earrings of twenty-four-karat gold, suitable for a society wed-ding. For the finishing wedding touches, slip into Bombay Bazaar (6636 Main Street, 604-327-1261). It sells forehead bindis (stickers or liquid), turmeric skin cream, and henna for decorating the hands along with stencil-like patterns to aid in the application.
The market is also a great place for food, the two principal restau¬rants being All India Sweets & Restaurant (6507 Main Street, 604-327-089’) and Himalaya Restaurant (6587 Main Street, 604-324-6514). Both offer an inexpensive buffet of the usual curry dishes with naan (and other breads), samosas, and meat and vegetarian entrées — along with cabinets filled with honey-soaked pastries and other delicacies. The Delhi Pan Centre (210 East 5oth Avenue, 604-327-0358) is a small take-out producing pan, an authentic Indian delicacy. Made with the betel nut of a particular palm and incorpo¬rating a white lime paste, the small folded packet is often eaten after a meal to refresh or anesthetize the palate. An acquired taste, perhaps.
The Punjabi Market reaches its zenith in April, when the Basakhi Day parade wends from the Ross Street (Sikh) Temple near Marine Drive through South Vancouver — home of thousands of Indo-Canadians — and wraps up in the market with speeches and celebra¬tions. It’s a colorful event dominated by would-be warriors wearing saffron robes and waving scimitar-like swords around for effect.
A decade or more ago, when the India-based Khalistan movement was lobbying for an independent Sikh state, the mood here was pretty uneasy. (The campaign had tangible support in Vancouver.) But things have calmed down considerably since then, with most Sikhs confining their religious politics to their homes and temples.
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