City shopping hubs up to the brim with festive shoppers from north to south
Telegraph | 16 April 2025
Shopping hubs of the city, from north to south, bustled on the last Sunday before Poila Boishakh and the crowd swelled as the sun went down.
There was hardly any space on the pavements of Gariahat and Hatibagan. The hawkers’ stalls as well as the shops along the pavements were teeming with shoppers as dusk fell.
The stores that were empty in the afternoon did not have a dull moment in the evening.
Santanu Das, 38, came to Gariahat from Behala’s Bhootnath Park with his family in the afternoon. “We left home at 2.30pm and arrived at Gariahat at 3.30pm. We went to some garment stores, bought clothes for my daughter wife,” said Santanu.
He had come with his wife, daughter and brother. “We had planned to eat out, but then reserved that for Poila Boishakh,” he said.
When the family arrived, Gariahat was still empty. When they were leaving, it was chock-a-block with shoppers.
“We expected to do brisk business in the evening. People usually step out once the heat reduces. Evenings are almost always time for good business ahead of Poila Boishakh,” said a hawker at Gariahat.
Anup Kumar Saha, proprietor of Benarasi Haat in Gariahat, said around 100 customers visited the store between 6pm and 9pm.
“I could hardly speak with anyone on the phone in these three hours. We opened at 11am. There were about 60 customers between 11am and 6pm, but in the next three hours we had about 100,” he said.
Saha said the business had picked up only at the eleventh hour. “Earlier, we used to have such business for a fortnight before Poila Boishakh, but now its in the last two or three days.”
Commuters passing through Hatibagan and Gariahat had to get off their vehicles and walk through the stretches because of the crowd.
Ritam Chakraborty, an IT employee had come to Hatibagan with his wife. The resident of Gouribari, near Maniktala, had come to buy garments for deities at home. “We wanted to buy new garments for deities at home ahead of Poila Boishakh... If we like something for us, we might purchase it, too,” he said.
Fast food shops — momo outlets, roll counters — had people huddled around them since early evening. As the evening progressed, the crowd outside the restaurants grew.
“We came late, purchased a couple of things and will have dinner before we leave,” a Sodepur resident said at Hatibagan. The family was headed to the outlet of a Mughlai chain in Hatibagan.
The pavements bustled with the noise of hawkers beckoning to customers while shouting aloud prices of items they were selling.
The din also included customers shouting back, bargaining for better deals.
The fast-filling parking bays around Gariahat and Hatibagan in the evening indicated the shopping fervour was high with only a day to go before Poila Boishakh.