Renovating kitchen markets
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
A Bengali daily carried a news, rather a plea, to renovate Katalbaghan kitchen market and narrated the woes of marketgoers there.
Well, whoever has ever seen a renovated, spick and span kitchen market anyway? Kitchen markets have through the ages grown up on exigencies. People go there for a brief time to buy their daily necessities and forget about it for the rest of the day.
An example of how dilapidated are our kitchen markets. A few years back I had gone to the Shah Ali kitchen market at Mirpur section one. While buying things from a grocery store there I was folding the edges of my trousers. The grocer looked at me quizzically and wanted to know why I was folding my trousers. I told him that I intended to go fishing in the beel. He was really surprised and asked where the beel was? Well, the fish market there does look like a beel with several inches of water all over!
Nobody, it seems, has any responsibility to look after the kitchen markets. It is presumed that the city fathers would do it. But they are very busy in higher pursuits and have no time or inclination to look after the lowly and mundane kitchen markets. There are scores of such kitchen markets in the capital city alone. The traders there have to pay money to the city corporation as license and other fees. The civic body must have funds earmarked for market improvement. But that fund goes, it seems, to renovate some pockets.
Hasanuzzamam Khan
Mirpur, Dhaka
Well, whoever has ever seen a renovated, spick and span kitchen market anyway? Kitchen markets have through the ages grown up on exigencies. People go there for a brief time to buy their daily necessities and forget about it for the rest of the day.
An example of how dilapidated are our kitchen markets. A few years back I had gone to the Shah Ali kitchen market at Mirpur section one. While buying things from a grocery store there I was folding the edges of my trousers. The grocer looked at me quizzically and wanted to know why I was folding my trousers. I told him that I intended to go fishing in the beel. He was really surprised and asked where the beel was? Well, the fish market there does look like a beel with several inches of water all over!
Nobody, it seems, has any responsibility to look after the kitchen markets. It is presumed that the city fathers would do it. But they are very busy in higher pursuits and have no time or inclination to look after the lowly and mundane kitchen markets. There are scores of such kitchen markets in the capital city alone. The traders there have to pay money to the city corporation as license and other fees. The civic body must have funds earmarked for market improvement. But that fund goes, it seems, to renovate some pockets.
Hasanuzzamam Khan
Mirpur, Dhaka