The Hindu Business Line : No book fair on the Maidan, a big blow to Kolkata

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No book fair on the Maidan, a big blow to Kolkata

The Calcutta High Court not allowing the Book Fair on the Maidan is a blow to Kolkata that had been projected on the international fair circuit from the late 1970s thanks to the book exhibition.

As someone who has been around — actively propagating the advantages of a book fair through the written word and savouring the benefits flowing from such an event — right from the time the first Calcutta Book Fair (as it then was) was held in 1976, the disallowance of the holding of the event for the first time ever on the Maidan by the Calcutta High Court is a blow that can barely be survived.

It is a blow not merely from a very personal point of view but also from that of the city itself, which the Book Fair helped propel on to the international fair circuit from probably the late 1970s onwards, when the fair had got into its stride.

Indeed, one remembers the time when, for the first time ever, representatives of organisers of the fair — the same Publishers and Booksellers Guild — were invited to the famed Frankfurt Book Fair, which was a recognition of the fact that the Kolkata event had arrived on the international scene, so to speak.

Those, however, were early days, what with inaugural functions being held in the open air, with the invited personages sitting on makeshift, uncovered diases in the winter sun, and doing the round of the fair after performing their pleasant, official function.

Changed ambience

Come to think of it, there was a slight difference in the ambience of the fair then compared to what it has been in recent years.

The first thought that strikes one is that the fair — then held opposite St Paul's Cathedral — was much smaller, with all the big publishing houses and bookshops participating from the second or the third event.

In those times, there were no country themes although there was no dearth of discussions and `talks' on diverse subjects which were `in the air' at that point of time.

Needless to say, the crowd was pressing even then although, one would like to think, there was a distinct difference in their composition compared to what we have been witnessing since perhaps the mid-1980s.

There were a larger number of genuine book-lovers, some of them bibliophiles, among the visitors, brought up in the tradition of spending hours in the College Street Coffee House, which is perhaps why the refreshment facility set up by the Coffee House in the fair-ground was an inevitable stop for most people.

Today, without trying to devalue the book fair in its modern garb, one is tempted to say that it has become more of a `big fair', as fairs go, rather than a specialised event focusing on books.

Admittedly, there is a veritable profusion of book stalls, but so are the eating places where the crowds are, by appearance at least, so `eclectic' that one tends to forget that the event is a fair focusing on books.

Pollution pressures

Environmental pollution has always been an important fallout of the book fair on the Maidan.

As the fair has grown, the extent of the associated pollution has increased, but one would like to imagine that with the growing global awareness of the harmful effects of pollution, the acceptability threshold has been naturally lowered.

The Kolkata Book Fair has fallen a victim to this inevitable development.

Should the fair, therefore, be allowed to die, which is a strong possibility if it is shifted permanently from the Maidan?

There can be only one answer to this question, and it is up to the city to devise methods to implement it — principally to save its own soul that is firmly rooted in a unique intellectual tradition, which marks it out from other metropolises of the republic.

Ranabir Ray Choudhury

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