Indian Summer

Neighbourhoods I’m white, I’m single and I’m from small-town Northern Ontario. I never thought I’d ﬁt into Little India. I couldn’t have been more wrong By Cynthia Brouse Indian Summer IF YOU DRIVE EAST along Gerrard Street on a weekend night, past Bollyhoo: the area I bought my house there a decade ago. I Chinatown II at Broadview, past quiet Leslieville, past Greenwood, that extends just used to tell people I lived in Little India, but the mundane view suddenly erupts in a metaphorical masala of a few blocks along I learned that was a misnomer, implying the fairy lights and Hindu gods, tandoor smoke and cumin, ads for in- Gerrard Street is a existence, either today or in the past, of a destination for South ternational phone cards, Bollywood movie posters, tabla beats and large number of East Indian residents. In Asians from Buffalo, ululating voices singing ghazals and bhangra—all crammed into a fact, only a handful had ever lived there. Detroit, Chicago and narrow street lined with narrow buildings that have seen better Pittsburgh The moniker applied by the local mer- days. Just as abruptly, after little more than a half-dozen blocks, it all chants, “Gerrard India Bazaar,” does a bet- stops at Coxwell, where the “Upper Beach” begins and real estate ter job of describing what is really a busi- prices rise. Filmmaker Deepa Mehta set parts of her spoof, Bolly- ness district that serves a distant clientele. wood Hollywood, in the clothing and jewellery stores on this stretch. For a long time after I moved in, the only “It reminds me of the India I knew 40 years ago,” she says. people I’d see on Gerrard before 4 p.m. were PHOTOGRAPHY BY KOUROSH KESHIRI SEPTEMBER 2005 TORONTO LIFE 29 the white locals on their way to one of the I loved it. But occasionally it dollar stores, Coffee Times or greasy spoons was awkward living near a com- that bracket the area (the Chinese and Viet- mercial area that didn’t seem to namese residents shop farther west, near be catering to me. I could buy Broadview). The few non–South Asian es- cilantro on every corner, but not tablishments right in the Bazaar—a Greek if I needed it at 10:30 in the morn- hairdresser, a United church—stood out ing—and anybody wanting a bagel or a cap- TORONTO IS KNOWN for its ethnic business like outposts of an older world. puccino was out of luck. The Bazaar com- enclaves, and in some ways, the India What made me want to live there was the prised a distinctive spine whose ribs—the Bazaar is much like other immigrant areas. transformation that occurred later in the streets running north and south off Ger- Not many Greeks live in Greektown either, day and on weekends. The people who rard—belonged to an entirely different but the difference is that at one time they came to lick kulfi and chew paan, buy Bolly- body. And far from just two solitudes, there did. As in Kensington Market, Chinatown wood videos and Islamic books, or get out- were at least half a dozen. Besides the huge and Little Italy, the Danforth attracted im- fitted in bridal saris and 22-karat-gold ethnic dividing line that is Gerrard, there migrants who lived in the surrounding wedding jewellery lived in Markham, Mis- were socio-economic lines, too. Though I houses and opened stores and restaurants sissauga or Malton. They weren’t likely to have a small-town, white working-class featuring the goods and cuisine of their na- show up in the Bazaar until the afternoon, background, I had spent 12 years in an tive culture. When they became more pros- but they were still hanging around late into apartment in the genteel Beach. But I perous, they moved to the suburbs, leaving the evening. As a woman living alone, I couldn’t afford to buy there. I was shocked behind a market that was enjoyed equally instantly felt safe here at night. The slender the first time I went to the No Frills on by locals and tourists, Greek and not. sidewalks were crowded with families: par- Coxwell and a fight broke out in the The India Bazaar grew the other way ents with children in strollers, many of the checkout line. One of my brothers was around. This forgotten little pocket—not women in saris or hijab; groups of teenagers; quick to inform me that the hole-in-the-wall quite Riverdale or Leslieville, sandwiched chattering grandparents. There were no bar near my house was known as “the Kick between the Danforth and the Beach—was nightclubs—just lots of nightlife. By mid- ’n’ Stab.” once dominated by Greek and Italian con- night, the shopkeepers had put away their As it turns out, I wasn’t the first to be struction workers and Anglo-Saxon people samosa stands, swept the sidewalks and drawn to the Gerrard India Bazaar for its who worked at Colgate and Wrigley in the locked the doors, and the whole scene went cheap real estate. It’s what created the strip days before those names branded condo home to the suburbs. in the first place. lofts. By 1972, when a north Indian busi- 30 TORONTO LIFE SEPTEMBER 2005 Eastern standard: South Asians make up 10 per cent of the GTA’s population. For many who settled in suburbs like Markham, Mississauga and Malton, the Gerrard India Bazaar provides a welcome taste of home nessman named Gian Naaz bought the old bers can buy Indian goods in the rival shop- school I did; we attended the same church; Eastwood Theatre, just west of Coxwell, to ping precincts that have sprung up closer to her sister married my uncle; our dads worked show Bollywood films, the strip had be- where they live, at Islington and Albion together. come poor and shabby. The Naaz Theatre Road or at Airport and Derry, where there’s After I moved to Toronto in 1975, it took drew hordes of South Asian visitors, but lots of parking and the stores are newer and me a long time to figure out how people most of them could already afford to live in shinier and less cramped. Still other South made connections in a city, by definition a better areas than the east end. Before long, Asian families, and their westernized off- conglomeration of strangers. In 20 years of an Indian record shop opened up nearby, spring, don’t care to buy their homeland’s apartment living, I formed bonds in univer- then a restaurant and a clothing store, and goods at all. And in the past few years, sity and at work, but I never knew my soon a South Asian market had been graft- there’s been a 70 per cent drop in American neighbours. When I went house hunting, I ed on top of a mostly white district. Old tourists to the Bazaar—thanks to SARS, the unconsciously sought a dense, multiplex hardware stores and hair salons became sinking greenback and September 11 (cross- network based around my home. I’ve suc- sari emporiums and sweet shops. An area ing the border wearing a turban and carry- ceeded in forging links in this neighbour- that covered barely three blocks was trans- ing a bag of chickpea flour can be a recipe hood, and some of them overlap with my formed into a destination not only for the for harassment). work and family life. If I go to a hardware inhabitants of South Asian communities And yet, if not as visitors, the Bazaar is store with my neighbour and run into a col- around the city and across Canada, but also finally attracting South Asians who want to league or my cousin, I am filled with a sense for those in Buffalo, Detroit and Chicago. live there, many of them Pakistani refugees. of joyful belonging. Today, with more than 100 stores, it touts it- But there probably aren’t enough to replace Ours is a front porch kind of street. self as the largest South Asian market in the tourists. So the merchants are learning When I look up and down its length, I see a North America. Suppliers in Bangalore and to adapt. They know their future depends low-to-middle-income assortment: retirees, Delhi know all about Gerrard. By the time I on drawing non–South Asians, too. And as young parents who are teachers, nurses, moved there, a purposeful walk to the post the India Bazaar reached out to me, I began actors, social workers, cab drivers, beauti- office on a Saturday afternoon involved el- to return the attention. cians. Interspersed with the modest houses bowing my way through a wall-to-curb and cheerful gardens are a few scary-look- mass of sociable amblers. I sometimes felt SOCIOLOGISTS TALK ABOUT social networks: ing rental properties, with tenants like the like a tourist in my own neighbourhood. you have a “dense” network if you know a ones who decided to celebrate Canada Day Today, the crowds don’t seem so dense. lot of people in a given community, and you by lighting Roman candles in their kitchen There’s no shortage of South Asians in the have a “multiplex” network if those people garbage can at 7 a.m., narrowly escaping GTA: the group now makes up more than also know each other—in other words, if when the house burned to a shell. 10 per cent of the population of Toronto, you’re linked to people in more than one An old Chinese woman squats on the nearly as many as the Chinese.

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