I am usually a point and shoot shopper for whom the shopping list is a sacrosanct document. Once the last item has been ticked off, I head back home, looking neither right nor left. Enter Mapusa Market on a Friday morning and within seconds, the sacred list becomes an illegal immigrant in your pocket. Now Mapusa Market may seem like any fruit and vegetable mandi anywhere but on Friday morning, is a kaleidoscope of colour, clamour and produce of every imaginable type. Vendors are still setting up their stalls as you thread your way warily through the narrow uneven path: first up glittering costume jewellery – good gifts for girlfriends – butterfly bracelets, dragonfly earrings, multicoloured jewel-like stones on white metal chains.

Right next door, a collection of cheeky fridge magnets, tiny cowrie turtles wearing John Lennon goggles, and beyond them heaps of vibrant, cheery cushion covers and runners. You move on, and are ambushed by Antony the antique dealer, by now an old friend who greets you with a winning smile. Spread in front of him antique china, delicately painted teapots and milk jugs from Macau (once a colony of Portugal now under the Chinese), huge bulbous amphoras in green glass, old-style stone pickle jars, ‘antique’ pocket watches, (which run on batteries!) heavy crystal whiskey and shot glasses and pickle-pots. He’s a consummate salesman, (‘only for you, special price, please buy you are my first customer!’) and before you know it, you’re digging deep. Much of the stuff has apparently been obtained from the several old mansions in Goa which had been taken down to be replaced by hideous tourist resorts. Not all. He digs deep into a sack, carefully unwraps a newspaper-wrapped parcel and reveals a gigantic yellowing conch (shunk); it must weigh at least 2 kilos. ‘Not from India, this from Africa!’ he whispers, surreptitiously looking around suspiciously. It looks like the skull of a prehistoric dinosaur but inside is rosy hued. You dare not ask its price in case there is a special one for you, and move on.

Across the aisle, piles of clothes, the usual ‘I love Goa’ T-shirts and wannabe Crocs, which don’t interest you at all. All mixed up with flower sellers and the beginning of the vegetable market section. You move ahead and suddenly your tummy does a somersault of sheer delight: The spicy redolence of traditional Goan sausages, wafting their mouthwatering marinade aromas straight up your nostrils – garlands of plump explosive red ones being held up by the robust women selling them. ‘Hypocrite, shut up’! you mutter evilly to your stomach, knowing the moment you put them in your mouth, they will spontaneously combust and detonate all the way down and out.

You take some consolation by sniffing appreciatively at the sacks of ethnically coloured spices. Again, you can’t get up too close and personal lest the red chilli dust gets up your nose. The vegetable stalls now take over: high green hills of French beans, higgledy-piggledy piles of marble-white garlic, like toppled miniature Moscow domes, smooth round potatoes tan as a lion’s hide, trussed bunches of spinach and dill, cauliflowers like cumulus clouds, and carrots spindly and red as well as plump and orange.

And then to fruit: pomegranates like open treasure chests of rubies, prickly pineapple, and heaps of maltas, like so many risen suns. The bunches of cherries and black grapes remind you of garnets, but you need to keep an eye out for the wasps that hover around interestedly, as if trying to strike a bargain. Occasionally, a hopeful Common Baron butterfly may touch down too, sampling with its feet. And then, of course, there are the sunny yellow bananas: from the stubby-finger elaichi bananas (insanely expensive in Delhi), to the regular-sized ones. The rather ugly red custard apple (Ramphal) turns out (later) to be crammed with seeds and though sweet, has a tacky thick texture, and you much prefer the regular ones (Sitaphal). Tentatively, you reach for a shiny forest green avocado and then back off: your history with these has always been unfortunate. Either they turn out rock hard or soft and rotting and anyway you have never found them to be as delicious as health fiends have claimed. What is wonderful is that none of the fruit here has been branded with tiny stickers: only the – (imported) kiwis and strawberries are given sanctuary and lie smugly in little plastic containers, needing protection from the roughneck locals.

The covered fish market is a-glitter with silvery fish of all kinds: kingfish, small sinuous sharks, burly red snapper, flat black pomfret, et al. Crabs lie spreadeagled and cockles and mussels clatter musically in their baskets as they are sorted through. Just outside, the fish-cutters pounce and deftly scale, cut and clean your ‘catch’.

The market was formally established back in 1960, shops remain open all week but not this buzzing street bazar section. There is an enclosed section too: more organised but it lacks the pizazz of the street bazaar. Much of the produce has been locally sourced – from farms, fields, orchards and villages scattered around the state and you wonder at the logistics of it all. The vendors must have loaded up at night and set off for the bazaar in small pickups, having harvested their fare through the week. The craftspeople must have worked and whittled and perfected their trinkets, for months preparing for the tourist season. By and large, the vendors are friendly and smiling (yes, a few do glower!) as they size you up (with special prices for foreigners, I suppose!), and begin to bargain.

You stagger out, bags far too heavy, and refresh yourself with coconut water. There are now enough fruit and vegetable to last you a fortnight, but you know you will be back again next Friday.