MOHAMMAD SUMAN, Chattogram

The bustling trading hub of Chaktai–Khatunganj in Chattogram -- one of the country’s oldest and largest wholesale markets -- once used to come alive a week before Pahela Baishakh to observe Halkhata, a thousand-year-old tradition.

Invitation cards used to be sent to traders, shops were cleaned and decorated, and accounts from the previous year would be settled. On the morning of the Bangla New Year, businesses welcomed customers with sweets, small gifts and warm greetings before opening fresh accounts in the traditional red cloth-bound ledgers.

The rhythmic beat of drums echoed through the marketplace, turning commerce into celebration.

Now, such scenes exist mostly in memory.

“It feels almost imaginary now,” says Akash Ghosh, a third-generation Halkhata trader at New Khata Ghar in Khatunganj. “But even back in the 1990s, this was exactly how Pahela Baishakh used to be.”

Halkhata -- the ceremonial opening

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