Every morning, the birds wait for Buddha...

The road to Jamtail Bazar is quiet after Fajr.

Shops are still closed. The day's traffic has not begun. Buddha Pramanik, a 64-year-old vegetable wholesaler, leaves the mosque in Kamarkhand village and starts walking towards the market, a little more than a kilometre away.

Then the birds appear.

A few settle on electricity wires. Others move between trees. Some fly low beside him. As Buddha continues down the road, their numbers grow.

They know where he is going.

By the time he reaches Jamtail Bazar in Sirajganj, hundreds can be waiting. Buddha goes to the vegetable wholesale market, where he has worked for years, and reaches for a jar of fine chanachur.

Breakfast begins.

For almost 10 years, Buddha has repeated this routine every morning, spending his own money to feed birds that have gradually learned his schedule, his route and, apparently, his call.

“I say my Fajr prayers at the mosque in Kamarkhand and then come to the market,” he told Daily Waadaa. “That is when the birds come out. I feed them along the way until I reach Jamtail Bazar.”

There was no plan when it started.

Around 2016, Buddha began scattering bits of food for birds near the market. Sometimes it was fruit. Sometimes biscuits. Sometimes chanachur.

At first, only a handful came. Buddha kept feeding them. The birds kept returning.

Their numbers increased until his morning walk became something of a procession. Today, he says, birds come from different places between Kamarkhand Hatkhola and Jamtail Bazar when they hear him.

“Gradually, the number of birds increased,” he said.

So did the amount of food.

Buddha now buys about a kilogram of fine chanachur and 250 grams of small biscuits each day. He also gives the birds rice. He insists on buying good-quality chanachur even though cheaper varieties are available.

“I buy the best fine chanachur in the market for them,” he said. “I never get tired of doing it.”

Not all of the feeding happens in the morning.

Some birds linger around the market until afternoon. When Buddha brings food from home for himself, they sometimes get part of that, too.

“Some of the birds stay around me until the afternoon,” he said. “I also give them food from what I bring from home for myself.”

The routine has survived periods when money was short. It has survived illness.

“Over these 10 years, there have been times when I faced financial difficulties or became ill,” Buddha said. “But even then, I tried to feed the birds.”

Buddha is the eldest of five children of Haran Pramanik. He has three daughters and a son; his daughters are married. His family, he said, encourages him to continue.

At Jamtail Bazar, what might once have appeared eccentric has long since become ordinary.

Motaleb, another vegetable wholesaler, watches the feeding almost every day. “When morning comes, it seems as though the birds are waiting for him,” he told Waadaa.

Locally, Buddha has acquired a second identity. People call him a pakhi premi — a bird lover.

Mamun Biswas, chairman of the local animal welfare organisation The Bird Safety House, sees something instructive in the habit.

“He may not have a lot of money,” Mr. Biswas said, “but he has a great deal of love for birds and animals.”

Buddha himself makes little of it. There is no elaborate feeding station and no organisation behind him. There is food, a familiar road and repetition.

“As long as Allah keeps me alive,” he said, “I will continue feeding them this way.”

The next morning, the sequence starts again.

The Fajr prayer ends. Buddha steps outside. He begins the kilometre-long walk towards Jamtail Bazar.

Somewhere along the road, the first birds notice him. Then the others come.

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