Chor Bazaar!

      With a title like this I am sure you are wondering where I am going with this post, well I am taking you on a journey to the most famous flea market of Mumbai! To be honest the tag 'flea market' does not even do justice for an amazing treasure trove like Chor bazaar. What it is a huge area full of lanes and each lane is choc-a-bloc with shops selling anything from, old bike parts, LPs, film and rock band posters( Oh yes they have Elvis and the Beetles too !) antique furniture, lamps, clocks,  navigators and compasses from old ships, Sculptures ( I actually saw a pair of larger than life extremely realistic lions in cast bronze!) old coins, telescopes, books, well you get the idea by now :) Oh and lest I forget my all time favorites the old HMV styled Gramophones with large beautifully worked brass speaker and all the old styles of telephones from the hand held earphone variety to the wall mounted style and every bit of wood and brass polished to gleaming perfection!

   As you can see from the picture here that pretty much every available space is crammed with simply gorgeous stuff, and if you look closely you can see the shop owner helping out my friend with some tiled wall hooks there.

   This shop had the most amazing old sign boards, could make out exactly but I think they were all hand painted check out the red one on the right its for the post office announcing the sale of postal stamps! When was the last time you used a stamp? :P

This little vintage car over here is actually a pan box with storage space on the cab, bonnet and foot board areas, look closely and you will see tiny hinges! Just below the car are some cast brass door knocker, unfortunately could not take better pictures as some of the shop keepers do not approve :(

As you can imagine a place like that there is a good chance for anyone to burn a large hole in their pockets but the only thing I managed to buy apart from some amazing tools was a baby milk bottle! Yup am sure you are wondering why would anyone buy a milk bottle from a flea market well here's why!

    For a long time now I would hear from my Dad that when he was a baby he had this milk bottle which was boat shaped and had two openings one on either end with the teats attached on both of them, and how he wished my mom hadn't lost it while moving ( parents !) I kept thinking those were not in production anymore and couldn't be found well guess what I found one ! Have you seen one of these or maybe your parents or aunts used to have one, do drop a line if you have hunted down something for your loved ones like this, both me and my dad would love to hear your story ( we are big on nostalgia here :D)

Baby milk bottle with two teats!

I hope to make another trip soon with my nephew as he is crazy about the old LPs and wants to add to the family collection!
P.S. Do you know apart from antique collectors and interior designers and of course the bargain hunters, who you are most likely to see here, people from the Hindi film and television industry ! Yup this is where they come to source out stuff for all their period dramas, and I have heard from one of the store keepers that recently the staff from the long running show on Sony TV- CID too were there sourcing old fashioned light switches, the toggle kinds ( something that I too will be adding to my collection !)