The Chowk Bazaar of Agartala: a hundred years of trading on the border

Chowk Bazaar has traded for a hundred years, outliving empires, a partition and two wars. Its oldest stalls still sell the same goods — brass, cloth, spice, fish — to the same families, now split by a border.

The market’s rhythm is set by the morning ferry from across the border and the evening train that carries shoppers home to Dhaka.

Merchants say the bazaar’s resilience is simple: ‘People need to trade. The border is a line on paper; the market is a line of life.’