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 One can find a number of small shops adjacent to the Amir Mahal dealing with rexine material, or synthetic leather, used as covers for sofas, chairs, cars and auto rickshaws. A few metres away is the Zaam Bazaar market. This market, with the atmosphere of a fair, specialises in the sale of plantains and coconuts.
You can see a number of small traders and petty shop keepers from South Chennai area thronging this area to source their requirements of plantains. By one in the afternoon the road is strewn with coconut husks and plantain leaves and barks.
Pycrofts Road as such is a very narrow road. And small shops, and the perishable goods that they deal with, occupy most part of the road, making it very difficult for walking down the road. People ply in almost all sorts of vehicles and the metropolitan bus, route number 13, also plies on both sides of this road. Thus commuters in this road, especially vehicle users, are bound to get great lessons in patience.
 There is a police station in the Zaam Bazaar area too. Having been in existence for the past fifty years, it is now a fare stage for the MTC buses. If you get into a bus and ask the conductor for a ticket to Zaam Bazaar then he will immediately ask "Police Station or Market?" Even though these two places are but a stone's throw distance from each other, the distance between them is treated almost like an international boundary, purely because of the existence of the bus fare stage.
Yet another bazaar crops up in the road adjacent to the Royapettah hospital. Here too one finds small shops catering to the needs of the lower income group people. And here too metropolitan buses ply merrily despite the narrow and congested streets, thus providing one more training ground for vehicle users to be trained in patience.
And finally two roads, that link Pycrofts Road and Peters Road, square off the area, the Jaani Jan Khan Road and the Triplicane High Road.
Ashokamitran
(Translated by Sujatha Pradeep)
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The 'Bazaar' area
