Rajkot, known as the city where Mahatma Gandhi spent his formative years, was featured in the 1981 Gujarati movie Pankhino Malo (bird’s nest). In the movie, actors Asrani and Jayshree T danced in front of major landmarks in the city to the tune of a Mahendra Kapoor song. One of the landmarks featured in the song is Dharmendra Road, which is mainly a clothes market.
The song celebrates Rajkot as a colourful city blessed by God. But at the junction of Dharmendra Road and Para Bazaar stands another landmark — Sir Lakhajiraj Shaak Market (Sir Lakhajiraj Vegetable Market), the first formal vegetable market of the city, which is popularly called the capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat. Anyone going towards Para Bazaar from the narrow and busy Dharmendra Road cannot help but get distracted by the high, Mangalore-tiled pitched roof of the vegetable market rising proudly over the surrounding buildings with fire-sheet roofs or modern flat roofs.
The market’s four open gables, with finials tipping the ridge boards of the M-shaped roof, stand out from the immediate surroundings and impart the structure the architectural grandeur of a bygone era. As one enters the market, what catches the eyes is the 40-foot high roof, supported by scissor trusses having a horizonal tie member each and wooden ridge board and rafters. Advertisement The trusses rest on 48 steel stanchions, 24 wooden columns and limestone-block walls.
From the four entrances are visible the two planes in the ro.
