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Crawford (aka Mahatma Phule) Market , ten minutes' walk north of VT station, is an old British-style covered market dealing in just about every kind of fresh food and domestic animal imaginable. Thanks to its pompous Norman-Gothic tower and prominent position at the corner of Lokmanya Tilak Road and Dr DN Marg, the Crawford Market is also a useful landmark and a good place to begin a foray into the bazaars. Before venturing inside, check out the friezes wrapped around its exterior - a Victorian vision of sturdy-limbed peasants toiling in the fields designed by Rudyard Kipling's father, Lockwood, as principal of the Bombay School of Art in 1865. The main hall is still divided into different sections: pyramids of polished fruit and vegetables down one aisle, sacks of nuts or oil-tins full of herbs and spices down another. Sitting cross-legged on a raised platform in front of each stall is its eagle-eyed owner, wearing starched khadi pyjamas and a Nehru cap, with a fresh red tilak smeared on his forehead. Around the back of the market, in the atmospheric wholesale wing , the pace of life is more hectic. Here, noisy crowds of coolies mill about with large reed-baskets held high in the air (if they are looking for work) or on their heads (if they've found some). One place animal-lovers should definitely steer clear of is Crawford Market's pet and poultry section, on the east side of the building. You never quite know what creatures will turn up here, cringing in rank-smelling, undersized cages. The tobacco market, by contrast, is altogether more fragrant. Look out for the Muslim hookah merchants selling picturesque smoking paraphernalia.
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