BATASINGARAM : If it were not for the muddy mess and resultant inconvenience, the state of affairs at Batasingaram on Wednesday can only be described as a bold attempt to rebrand a fruit market into a rural water theme park. The state’s largest fruit trading hub transformed into a fine mixture of slush, stink and bovine leisure courtesy of some rain — not a cyclone, not a flood, just regular rain.
Situated a mere 35 km from Hyderabad, the market resembled anything but a centre of commerce on Wednesday. Vendors were seen wading through knee-deep water while cattle were enjoying their impromptu spa day. If fruit traders were looking for a tropical experience, they got it, albeit without tourists, hygiene or any functional infrastructure.
“This happens every time it rains,” shrugged a trader, gesturing to the cows wallowing beside his crates of mangoes. “We can’t unload fruits properly,” he said, indicating that who needs dry ground when you have murky puddles or garbage piles large enough to deserve their own PIN code, alongside ankle-breaking potholes.
Inside, the so-called ‘roads’ functioned more as obstacle courses. Traders played a game of strategic placement to avoid sinking into the mud, while two-wheelers did their best impression of boats. Stalls sat half-empty as workers refused to wrestle with slush just to do their jobs. Meanwhile, fruit waste lay strewn around like modern art installations no one asked for, hinting at a sanitation plan that possibly doesn’t exist.
One trader offered insight into this aquatic wonderland. “The market sits lower than the main road. Naturally, water collects here.” Apparently, gravity remains the only working system in Batasingaram.
Despite handling thousands of tonnes of fruit daily, Batasingaram continues to demonstrate how critical infrastructure can be optional, especially when you have faith in gravity, rainwater and luck. Wednesday’s scene made it clear that planning for the monsoon is still just a concept, not a practice.
But then again, who needs long-term solutions when short-term slogging through mud gets the job done... eventually?