Kolkata Book Fair 2006 - a book lunatic's visit!!!

Visited the largest book fair in Asia and one of the largest in the world – the Kolkata (Calcutta) book fair- yesterday and this experience was as bit enjoyable as last year. This is was the last time that the fair would be held in the Maidan (in the pic), the so called green lung of the city. After a series of protests at the mess created on the Maidan grounds after each fair or rally, it seems that the greens have won for the moment. The book fair will be held near Science City from next year, which will be good as it will be near salt lake, where I stay…..but I digress…

The fair was a huge huge affair, don’t think it is possible for a person to see every store properly even if they come everyday for the 10 days of the fair. I only went to the english book sections, which was simply huge and bigger than anything I’v seen anywhere else, but for those who read bengali literature, the number of books would have surely given them paroxysms of pleasure. Not only is the number of books huge but even the prices vary, sometimes steeply so the trick is to not to be an implulsive shopper but look for the same titles in other shops. Of the three books I bought yesterday – ‘Brothers against the Raj’ (about Subhas Bose and Sarat Bose) , ‘Something Happened’ (by Joseph Heller) and ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’ ( John Perkins), the last one was to be found for 9 pounds at Landmark and at 4.5 pounds at Mehta’s. phew….a cool 50% drop…..dunno how that happens but it proves it pays to look around….the other two books I cdnt find anywhere…..so they seem to be a good buy for the price....


The theme of the fair was Spain (they have a different country’s theme each year – last year it was Latin America – not a country that strictly, though Bolivar would have wanted it to be) and the seven entrance gates were a replica of seven famous gates in spain. Don’t ask me the names, they were describing the gates and their names (when speaking in bengali) in heavily accented spanish, as if the bengali announcers had been given a hasty course in spanish. There were huge pandals with photos by Picasso (Guernica was given a prominent spot) and Dali….and there was an almost 1 km long queue of patiently (very very patient, I must say!!!) waiting people waiting to get into the spain’s theme pandal. Didn’t bother with that one…had reached the fair at 4 and it closed at 8, not enough time to gawk at the lines and the sheer number of people…

And were there people, oh boy!!!! Even though it was not so much as it was last year (probably because it was Republic Day and people thought there wd be roadblocks and such), but it was sure enough to raise quite a mini-sandstorm (the grass had given up long ago trying to grow under this repeated assault – there was a huge CPM rally a few weeks back) and at certain places you couldn’t even see the ground, all you saw were lots of heads bobbing around….but I always find the crowd to be one of the main attraction but then that’s me!!!!


And in that huge mass of humanity, you wouldn’t know what you would come across….suddenly spotted a group of people strumming a guitar and singing and then there was a person who was pencil-sketching (the potraits were really good). Then I came across a pandal where there was a theatre going on. I even spotted a Scientology camp in the midst!!!! And the fact that a map was not easily available made it even more of a sort of adventure!!!!!

The food court was also well stocked even though the major market or shall we say people-share had been grabbed by Arambagh and with reason too….the food was simply delicious……and pretty fresh and hygenic too….and even though the food on display is enough to give one an appettite, you probably wont need that prodding. After you had been through a couple of shops and wrestled your way through the crowd, you are ready for a king’s feast!!!!! I was…..after that, the book lover’s experience was complete.












for some more official info visit
http://www.catchcal.com/kaleidoscope/fair/calcutta_book_fair.asp