What's up with the book fair?

Benita Sen reports on the second most important event in Kolkata's calendar - the annual mecca of bibliophiles.

The tender notice appeared some time ago, ringing the official inaugural note to the build up of the second most important occasion on the Kolkata calendar. The first, of course, being the recently concluded Durga Puja. The second, the Book Fair.

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Book fans or bibliophiles, if you please, have already knocked off January 26 to February 6, 2005 on their calendars for the 30th Kolkata Book Fair. In an erudite city where parlez vous Francaise isn’t mistaken for a French toffee, bookworms -- 2.2 million of them, if 2004 is any yardstick to make a calculated guess by -- are thrilled that the theme for the 2005 Fair will be France.

Publishers are just as glad, since they can now hope to strike deals with counterparts in a book-happy country with a rich literary heritage and hope to push through several translations.

The official website of the Kolkata Bookfair brings a sigh of relief to several prospective visitors who were worried if they’d have to trudge to the eastern fringe of the city, since there has been considerable consternation at the environmental harm the Book Fair and similar other fairs cause the Maidan, the "lungs" of the city. There is yet another group of people, most of whom love books as ardently, who hope that from next year, the Book Fair leaves the Maidan alone, even if it means a little detour for visitors.
After all, they point out, it is the same Maidan where morning walkers are being asked to pay four rupees for every morning that they tramp through Victoria Memorial since, as the court ruling quoted in a newspaper report says, "the layer of mist and fog, which saves the grass of the Memorial compound and also the monument, is being destroyed by morning walkers. So, it is necessary to restrict the movement of the public during the morning for the sake of protection of the monument and its compound from pollution." This is certainly in keeping with the city whose Green Bench drew the attention of the country to its environmental awareness.

It is also the same Maidan and to be precise, the venue of the Book Fair where, according to an earlier report, the Army planted two thousand saplings last year. "Book-lovers," says the report, "walked over all of them, save two."

This year, the Army and East Bengal Club are said to have embarked on a massive plantation drive of 4,000 saplings on the Maidan except the book fair grounds, since they couldn’t be assured better luck with the saplings. People didn’t just walk over them. They poured tea and fizzy drinks that they couldn’t finish, onto them, they choked the ground around with litter.