THE PLIGHT OF A BOOK LOVER: Here are my ruminations on the Kolkata Book Fair 2022 that happened last month. A recently turned bibliophile thanks to my dear friend Sanjukta Sarkar, I could manage to visit the Fair towards the very end. It was extremely hot. At the entrance no one checked my temperature or asked for my Covid vaccination certificates. The entry was free and so there were people from all strata assembled there for the love of books. The first thing that struck me was the layout-it was not very well-planned. Instead of grouping stalls according to genres or language, the stalls were placed randomly and not in a linear fashion making it really difficult to navigate. Thanks to the media hype and word of mouth, there were humongous crowds at each stall lapping up the printed word. Sadly the number of English language stalls were way less and mostly the stalls selling Bengali languages were predominant. There were a lot of books on Satyajit Ray(this year being his birth centenary), Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen. I found a tome on the Mahanayak selling for 4000 bucks-it was unwieldy since it was too heavy. There were some Narayan Debnath books, a book on Sandhya Mukherjee(Gitasree) and another one on Lata Mangeshkar(Swarnalata). I found some miniature Khushwant Singh’s books with tales of love and lust but strangely no book from Shobha De. At the Rupa store I eyed many biographies of movie personalities and other celebrities. There were about 10 policemen in front of the Russia bookstore. There was a serpentine queue outside Ananda Publishers stall but inside I found nothing to shell out cash for. The Book Fair this year had a sale worth 23 crores and a total footfall of about 25 lakhs(rough estimate). Still the smaller shops were calling out to passersby and begging them to visit their stores. There were only one or two titles available on Covid 19. The collection at the Book Fair was mostly very hackneyed, old and very pedestrian. Most of the publishers played safe and displayed only popular titles. Nothing stimulating, intellectual or erudite. I spent almost 5 hours at the fairground trying to jostle through the crowds and in search of that unmissable perfect book but found very few. This fair turned out to be a great place to hang out for the teenagers and the young adults who were less concerned with books but more in the socializing opportunities. I wish that the book fair showcased more recent, thought-provoking titles that would satisfy readers with both eclectic and esoteric tastes. And also wish that the choice of refreshments and hygiene facilities were better. I had the good fortune of bumping into my dear friend Mohua Roy Dasgupta (along with her sister Madhumita) who has a way with words herself. Outside the Fair grounds there were a few make-shift stalls selling popular titles at a fraction of a price and made brisk business. Mostly my takeaways from the Fair were a pair of tired feet, dry throat and parched lips.
AninditaRoyMusings 