LFC HYDERABAD| February 2026
Since around 2021, almost every week, my Wednesdays were reserved for a pilgrimage to the farmers’ market. I would walk to the weekly market near Shaikpet, where I was living then. It gathers around an old dargah, which people say dates back to the Nizam’s time, maybe even 500 years, though I haven’t been able to confirm it. What is certain is the way the place transforms by four o’clock in the evening. The whole stretch fills up with farmers and vendors—fresh greens lie scattered in loose heaps, seasonal fruits stack up in uneven piles, and voices rise and overlap, calling out prices in a chorus that became familiar to me.
I am very particular about my vegetables. I cannot buy blindly. I am least interested in buying from supermarkets, and online shopping has never satisfied me. I have to see the vegetables, touch them, look at their colour, their firmness. So I kept going back, week after week. Even during the COVID-19 waves, whenever the market opened after restrictions eased, I would find my way there.
My familiarity with the space grew with each visit. A few vendors would have very limited produce—ten chikoos in summer, one or two papayas, a handful of starfruit. They would say it with a kind of pride, as if to clarify, “this is not wholesale, this is from my tree.” I learnt that many of them were farmers bringing their own produce from areas on the outskirts of Hyderabad. Groups of them would pool money, hire a vehicle, disperse into the market, sell what they had grown, and leave.
One day I went slightly early, at 3 pm, and waited just to see the vendors arrive. I wanted to know who was coming with what. I then began speaking to each of them. Some were friendly, some reserved. It depended on their age, mood, and the day. But slowly, a rhythm began to take shape.
There was one farmer who would bring starfruit. I used to run a small foodstall business on the side, from my home or at exhibitions, and was trying to work only with ingredients that were natural or at least directly sourced from farmers. Prices at organic stores were too high for me. So when I bought the starfruit and made juice from them, it sold well. The next week, I asked him to bring more. He started keeping aside some of the best looking fruit for me. No one else bought that kind of quantity week after week. Once, as I was showing up at the market, he remarked, “Amma, I was waiting for you!”
Another memory of the market is about moringa leaves. One farmer would bring drumsticks every week and simply discard the leaves. When I asked him why he did so, he shrugged, “Who will eat them?” I told him I would. The following week he brought me a generous bunch and asked for 20 rupees. Then he quickly added that even ten would be enough, half in disbelief to why I would want what everyone usually discards. I gave him 20.
At home, I turned those leaves into moringa podi for my small business stall. Before completely selling out, I kept one bottle aside for my children. From that batch, I filled two small portions and carried them back to the market the next week, handing them to the farmer from whom I bought the leaves and another farmer.
They both smiled in that half-amused, half-pleased way, surprised the leaves they once threw away had come back to them transformed.
There was an older farmer who came from Moinabad. He would arrive in the morning in his auto and sit till late into the night with varied produce but always the brightest tomatoes. I noticed he bought curry from nearby shops to eat with the rice he carried from home. Once, with the tomatoes I had bought from him last, I made tomato chutney and handed him a small bottle. I said, “Uncle, have this with your rice instead of buying curry.” An older gentleman, he often did not express much, but after that, he could tell he would always wait for me. During mango season, if I picked some for my children, he would stop me. ‘Not these’, he would say, ‘I I have kept aside the better, homegrown ones for you.’
Over time, these relationships became part of my weekly routine—the sense of community I felt every time I visited the farmers made the trip to the market worthwhile.
In May 2025, I shifted to Lingampally, on the other side of Hyderabad, far from Shaikpet, making it practically impossible to continue going to the market. While I missed my mid-week ritual, life took over and I wondered if it was finally time to let go of that community. For over six months, I could not go back even once. Then, luck, timing, and mostly a work opportunity in the neighbourhood brought me back to Shaikpet on a Wednesday evening. By 5.30 pm, I knew where to rush.
The ‘tomato uncle’ saw me first. He just stared and asked, “Where were you?”, almost reprimanding me with concern. When I explained my move, he softened and immediately started recommending what I should take and what I should avoid. “Take these brinjals, these are from my farm. Don’t take these gongura leaves, they are from the market.”
I went to the lemon vendor next—an older man who would sell only lemons. In the past, I would often ask him about the fasts he would observe during Ramzan. That day, I stood quietly while he was looking down, not noticing me. When I said, “Uncle?”, he lifted his head and just looked at me, as if confirming it was really me. That expression of familiarity and happiness, I cannot fully put into words.
As a single mother of two boys who is caught up with work and other commitments of daily life, I am not too close to my relatives. There are no daily phone calls, no big circle of friends. So when these farmers, who aren’t related to me, asked where I had been, and if I was doing alright after not seeing me for six months, I was floored by a sense of community—of knowing I meant to them as much as they meant to me.
I might never go back to a supermarket again.