The Rush for Okra

About 125,000 Indians live in Chicago land area. Even though okra is available in most of the Indian groceries it’s not an easily available vegetable. There is an international fresh market in one of the northwest suburbs which carries most of the Indian vegetables. If you are here for your grocery shopping on a Saturday morning, one can be in a funny/strange situation which can sometimes irritate you if you are in a bad mood…..the rush for okra. One can easily point to where the okra stall is, by seeing the crowd and all of them in the crowd are ladies. If three women stand side by side then the whole stall is occupied and you see hands picking orka from between those three women and also over there shoulders and also heads if they are not too tall. People push and squeeze others to get some space in the crowd. Unless you’re a dynamic man who can push through a crowd of women you can’t take home a bag of okra. Each one is busy filling their bags with the vegetable after making sure that every single okra is perfectly tender. If the tail of the orka snaps in one shot when you bend it, then it’s perfectly tender. When I observe the process of picking, I amazed at the perfection each of the ladies have attained in that process and also the speed at which they pick. Each one spends more than 10 minutes near the okra stall and picks up more than 3lbs of orka. I saw a sign that said “Limit to 3lbs per person” when I was there last time. I came back wondering if those ladies would ask their kids and husbands to accompany them next time, so each member can claim for 3lbs.