free market

my preferred internet cafe is next to this street market here in colaba, mumbai. is a fairly crowded and well established market - i think its mentioned in the lonely planet. as i was milling about today waiting for the inspiration to go online i heard a shout and the market turned to instant chaos with people throwing all their goods together and trying to vacate. within 60 seconds the vast majority of the vendors had left and the ones remaining were frantically picking their carrots and papayas off the street. a large military cargo vehicle roled into the market followed by a smaller ambassador car with a siren. some older police guys with sticks got out and followed by laborers. they seized everything that was left in the market and and loaded it into the cargo van. large baskets of papaya's, carrots, banannas ... everything. this looting went on for about 10 minutes then they left and people started creeping back in. when i went back to the cafe several hours later everything was back to normal tho many of the street vendors had 1 awkward bunch of bananas in their baskets rather than their usual cornucopia.