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Tick April 5 for Bengali ?boimela?
BOOKLOVERS CAN ready for a treat of a Bengali kind. The top diary event for April 5 will be Lucknow?s first-ever Bengali Book Fair (boimela). And, it?s not just going to be about books alone but visitors will get to chat with top Bengali writers in a series of interactive sessions. There may be several reading sessions as well.
BOOKLOVERS CAN ready for a treat of a Bengali kind. The top diary event for April 5 will be Lucknow’s first-ever Bengali Book Fair (boimela). And, it’s not just going to be about books alone but visitors will get to chat with top Bengali writers in a series of interactive sessions. There may be several reading sessions as well.
The organisers, the Bengali Club management, are working overtime to prepare for the five-day show. The Publishers & Booksellers Guild (PBG) is also pitching in for the fair. PBG vice-president Ashok Barik visited Lucknow in January to inspect the mela ground and club auditorium.
The list of invitees include Mahasweta Devi, Buddhadev Guha, Manishankar Bandopadhyay, Bibhas Chakrobarty, Suchitra Bhattacharya, Dibendu Palit, Joy Goswami, Samresh Majumdar, Tapan Bandopadhyay and many others.
The Club literary secretary Enakshi Sinha visited Kolkata recently to attend a book fair as part of efforts to ensure that the Lucknow fair is a big success.
“There, I met West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya and invited him to attend the fair. However, he expressed his inability to visit Lucknow but instead directed PBG officials to help us,” she said.
According to Sinha, the Bengali Club is roping in 20-25 Bengali publishers of repute to put up stalls at the fair. These include Visva-Bharati, Deb Sahitya Kuthir, Ananda Publications, Sishu Sahitya Mandir, Bangla Academy and several others. Their invites are to be dispatched next week.
The organizers will also be holding events like a quiz and photo identification contest to attract visitors. Sinha explained: “For instance lines from books penned by leading authors would be read out and the participants would be asked to identify the book and the author. Similarly, photographs of famous personalities would be put up and the people would be asked to identify them.”
The organizers are also planning to hold seminars and literary meet on serious issues like how youngsters can be encouraged to study Bengali language, what role grown-ups need to play in this regard etc. Club general secretary Arun Banerji said, “We’re making a sincere effort and hope that Bengalis of the state capital would appreciate our hard work.”
“These events will encourage youngsters in Bengali families to take to reading and writing in Bengali and help popularize the language,” he said.
After the Bengali film festival that was held a couple of years back, this is surely going to be the next major show for the Bengalis in Lucknow.
