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Pakhir Haat

Makeshift market that caters to bird lovers

Tasrifa Trisha
20 Sep 2021 00:00:00 | Update: 20 Sep 2021 11:34:00
Makeshift market that caters to bird lovers
Over the years, the makeshift market grows as hundreds of bird-sellers come to the place and sell their lots– Shamsul Haque Ripon

For six days a week, the 600-metre stretch (of road) that cuts through a semi-commercial quarter in Mirpur-14, wears a drab look with all the usual hustles and bustles of a middle-class neighbourhood in Dhaka.

On Saturday, for six hours from 7am to 12pm, this apparently mundane road however turns into the capital’s largest makeshift bird market known as ‘Pakhir Haat’ and attracts thousands of bird lovers who flock there in numbers to check out the latest avian offerings.

Meet Habiba Sultana for instance. The middle-aged housewife on Saturday was happy to score a deal from one of some 300-bird sellers.

“During a large part of the day, I stay at home alone as my husband remains busy in office and kids in schools. So, I have taken a number of birds as pets so that I can spend some time with them,” Habiba told The Business Post.

Like Habiba, hundreds of others were seen haggling with the sellers to bring home their feathery friends. To cater their demands, the bird sellers come from across the country with dozens of bird varieties in this wholesale market.

The hottest item in Pakhir Haat is pigeon. Aside from that, various other birds such as Bazigar, Love Birds, Java, Sparrow, Parrot, and Australian Dove etc are also sold in the market. Their price ranges start from Tk 300 and go up to Tk 3,000, informed the sellers.

Talking with The Business Post, Aminul Islam, one of the bird sellers said, customers aged between 16 and 40 mostly visit the market on Each Saturday.

“Sometimes older people also come here to buy birds for their children or grandchildren,” he said adding that female customers usually outnumber their male counterparts.

Aminul informed that a typical ‘Haat day’ sees transactions worth of Tk 3-4 lakh. “But these amounts vary depending on the number of customers.”

The history of Pakhir Haat is not that old. In fact, this makeshift market is just into its eighth year of formation, The Business Post found out.

In July 2013, Bashir Uddin Majumder—locally known as Majumder Shaheb—took an initiative to establish the market along with some of his friends.”

“One fine morning, I along with four of my friends suddenly planned to sell pigeons in this particular stretch of road. This neighbourhood had lots of pigeon lovers and we thought we could not only cater their needs but also could make a business out of it,” Majumder told The Business Post.

At the beginning, they used to sit on footpath without any license. Soon after, problems began to surface as local police impeded their attempts. Majumder then got the hold of the local political high-ups and wrote an application to the ward council to run their business on each Saturday. His application was approved.

Over the years, the makeshift market matured as hundreds of other bird-sellers came to the place and started selling their lots. Some of them even established permanent bird shops on the two sides of this stretch of road.

While this market has flourished and has garnered the attention of the capital’s bird lovers, it also has attracted the attention of the authorities concerned, and that too for good reasons!

Talking with The Business Post, SM Jahir Uddin Akon, Director of Department of Wildlife Crime Suppression, said some sellers in this Mirpur market are in practice of selling Deshi birds like parrots which is completely prohibited under the amended Wildlife Act of the country.

“The Bangladesh Government permits to buy and sell foreign birds like Bazigar, Love Birds, Java, Sparrow, Macaw and Australian Dove because they can easily be preserved within cage and they can have propagation inside it,” said Jahir.

“But we don’t give permission to sell Deshi birds inside cage,” he said, “We have repeatedly asked the sellers in Mirpur bird to stop selling those but they don’t pay heed to our call.”

“We will soon take appropriate steps against those sellers,” Jahir added.

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