In the above Harry-Potter-ish narrative, do the obvious replacements – replace Quidditch by Football, tents with stalls, wizards and witches by men and women, magical items by books, object of interest by book of interest, Ministry of Magic by Ministry of Sports and Youth Welfare, and you get the summary of Book Fair 2008, 1-10 March.
Just like last year, there was much commotion about where the fair will be held. Let us not get into that discussion here, but at the end, Yuvavarati seems to be a fair choice for fair, temporarily. It indeed is a vast place, with plenty of stalls, so spread that one can not finish in one day if he/she visits all the stalls, giving enough time per stall to skim over all the books. I went there twice – once with family and other time with friends, each time visiting a different section, still failing to see one section.
To be true, the arrangement was good; there were enough of food stalls, with the special attraction ‘mobile-muri’, which is ready-made packed jhaal-muri; many ‘use-me’ bins, pay-n-use toilets, and alert ground-cleaners. Such necessary things are often overlooked, but not this time, which gave the fair a clean look, so that people may sit over the grass and take rest or take a look at their books and belongings.
I do not know why, the ‘Desh’ pavilion was allotted such a huge space where only a little fraction of it was used for displaying books. The ‘Ajkaal’ stall was decorated with interesting stills, and the one my friends liked most is a picture of Sourav Ganguly dressed as a Punjabi to avoid being mobbed during bhashan; but here weren’t even such things. Moreover, the big pavilion ate up walking space and created a bottleneck.
Books were aplenty, and true to the claim of the sports minister, this time there were lesser number of people who come to just have some fun, spend some time and see not book but their Bengali pronunciation. So stalls were more specious, relatively, even during the peak hours, better for bookaholics like me. But I must admit, I am not philanthropic to the book sellers – I just see and enlist books in the book fair, do not buy them – I buy books in College Street where I get double discount. But, there is often rare books brought out of dusty stocks and put on display at book fair, and in such cases, I buy them instantly. I had once a long dreadful waiting time of seven years, when in the childhood I saw ‘Ekei bole Shooting’ in the Boimela, but went to Boipara to discover it has gone out of print. Surprisingly, this time, in one book stall, an old man got compassionate (may be because at that time their stall had no client but only fleas) and gave me double discount, so I bought a lot of books from there.
This time I saw a gamut of new books, not in the sense of published this year, but on the display this time, and got allured by many. Among them are, an excellent collection of four articles on ‘Bangaliyana’ by Narayan Sanyal, an assortment of books on humorous prose & poetry in Bengali, old collections of Deb Sahtiya Kutir (puja magazines in our parents’ childhood) republished, the sensational autobiography of Debabrata Biswas, etc.
I was there on the closing night. The announcer talked in the mic with a heavy voice. The singers in the stall shows bade fairwell. Then the giant bell sounded the ending with repeated gongs. We all clapped to appreciate the fair, the organizers, the publishers and the crowd of book-lovers who make it successful. And while trudging towards the exit gate, I bade goodbye to the fair in my own way, because there is very little probability that for coming five years I will be at Kolkata, not to say of book fair; saying “Jokhon porbe na mor payer chinho ei bate…”
Photo Gallery:En-trance:
Hoarding:
Decorations:
The bottleneck:
Attraction - mobile-muri:
Central decorations:
The book-loving crowd:
Road to departure:
Pic courtesy: Mriganka & Piyas
