Dhaka’s bustling farmer’s market
Urban villages around Dhaka are pockets of areas that have gotten cramped amidst the rapidly rising city. One finds them in Uttara Residential Area (3rd Phase) -- an extension to the Uttara Model Town, Purbachal, and Beribandh areas. Many residents of these places grow their own produce and often sell them in nearby bazaars. That is how the farmer's market notion got popularised in the outskirts of the city.
When the Purbachal Expressway was under construction and the area was popularly known as 300 feet or Baluchar, there was a popular farmer's market, the Neela Market. The main attraction was that you got fresh vegetables and fish from the villages nearby, and many of the vendors there were the actual producers of these agro products. The market got demolished once the expressway construction commenced.
The reason why a farmer's market is sought after in Dhaka is simply because of the fresh produce available there. It makes you willing to pay a higher price and travel halfway around the city to grab a basket of these seasonal vegetables.
And all for the reason that the products found in farmer's markets are organic and pesticide free. How much of that is true is debatable but the vegetables are indeed grown in the backyard of the seller's homestead.
One such market is Meradia Haat, beside Banasree, which brings together buyers and sellers with its fresh produce. While not the same as a traditional rural haat, the centenarian bazaar still brings back memories of a village haat for those who are blessed to have seen one.
Besides Meradia, the most recent favourite is Bou Bazar, a farmer's market found a little farther from the roundabout of the metro rail in Uttara 3rd phase. Young wives, old mothers, and shrewd men all sit with their assorted seasonal vegetables and attract throngs of Dhakaiites looking for fresh produce.
A young girl draped in an overused sari, with sindoor on the hair parting, was vending a basket full of helencha shaak, also known as buffalo spinach, for just a meagre Tk 50. An old lady was seen selling the rare dumur, or cluster fig. A chirpy couple was selling duck eggs and half-ripe mangoes from the tree in their backyard. The assortment of vegetables and rare finds were aplenty. There was invariably the snack van selling hot peyaju, beguni, and gurer jilapi.
Amid the hustle and bustle, children were having fun too. They were seen playing around their mothers.
The sellers at these farmer's markets are not regular vegetable vendors; they are suburb dwellers or migrants who want to live the life they left in their villages. They go for random farming according to their needs and sell off the excess for some extra income.
I found the mood and ambience at Bou Bazar subdued. A light wind was cooling off the humid evening, the sky was like an orange marmalade; as a bystander, the entire panoramic view of the market filled my heart with a kind of adoration for the hardworking men and women of Dhaka.