Vibrant vegetable markets

Kazir Dewry kitchen market. Photo: Star

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Reazuddin Bazaar is still the oldest and biggest shopping centre of Chittagong, consisting of three parallel lanes entering from the Station Road on the south, and one lane entering from the Jubilee Road on the east.

All four lanes meet at a right angle about 300 yards inside the market, thus creating a square where the vegetable market sits. The market is wondrously busy day and night with fish and meat galore, and seasonal vegetables all aplenty.

However fresh and cheap every thing in this market is, it seems to have lost favour with the city people, as it is located in the busiest section of the city, making visits difficult. Reazuddin Bazaar has godowns and fish storage plants, and so it easily acts as the number one wholesale depot of the city.

Chawk Bazaar vegetable market is as old as Reazuddin Bazaar, and it has a reputation for selling fresh fish, mainly the smaller species like the Bombay duck and other such assortments. Chawk Bazaar is small and rather unclean, though it is a favourite haunt of the low-income group people.

On the other hand, the Karnaphuli Market is quite large and disciplined. And majority of the buyers in this market comes from the adjacent areas of Pathantuli and Agrabad. It is almost an evening market, because people returning home from offices in Agrabad take their chances at the later hours of the day. It sells big fish, Ruhi and Katla in abundance, and also beef, mutton and chickens. Many people maintain that the fish sold in this market is the finest quality. Another big bazaar is

Bahaddarhat Bazaar. In crowd accumulation it will come second only to Reazuddin Bazaar. Since Bahaddarhat is a kind of the last frontier of the city, its market is always renewed with fresh supply of vegetables and fish from the village.

Besides, Bahaddarhat Bazaar seems to be rich in collection of indigenous but insignificant seasonal grove fruits like amloki, jalpai, betgula, panifal, and golapjam, which are available here as much as sugarcane, tamarind, jamboora, pineapples, and watermelons. Those who avoid high-calorie food in their diets and prefer to depend on a herbal-dominated menu actually come to Bahaddarhat bazaar more often than not. The chickens of this market are also of a good breed, especially the Australian leghorn.

But the cleanest and the most popular market is the Kazir Dewry Kancha Bazaar. Of all the City Corporation-managed markets this is easily the best one. The lanes inside this market are suitably wide for easy sauntering, and vegetables, fish, and meat are all vended in clear-cut isolated sections. There is an adjunct car park, which obviously has facilitated the women to come in large droves. Women from posh and less-posh areas are the regular visitors here. And you go there anytime of the day, you will hear the vendors crying out at the top of their voice a single word "afa" (apa, meaning elder sister) in their attempt to draw attention of the female customers.

Poet Wahidul Alam who lived at Kazir Dewry and was a regular frequenter to the market used to call it the Afa Market.