Monthly Archives: March 2019
Au Revoir, Calcutta
On a Sunday with barely half a day left for him to bid adieu to the city he had called home for the past three years, French consul-general Fabrice Etienne criss-crossed north Calcutta with t2
Jorasanko Thakurbari: The house of Tagore made it to Etienne’s list of favourite spots as a mark of tribute to Rabindranath. “You have no idea of the influence that he has unless you reach Bengal. He is here on the streets, (our car had stopped at a traffic light and sure enough, there was Rabindrasangeet playing on the speaker), there is the university named after him, there is Santiniketan… there is so much respect. Everyone knows his work, not just the songs. This is unique. Of course, Calcutta is having trouble thinking beyond Tagore but that is a different issue. Only a small part of his work is available in French, like Andre Gide’s translation of Gitanjali and some novels like La Maison et Le Monde (Ghare Baire) and Charulata. But few in the West know that Tagore is more than a novelist. In French literature, we may compare him to Victor Hugo who was an educationist, a poet and a novelist. But his legacy is not as alive as Tagore’s is.”
The riverside: Tip-toeing through the monsoon slush at the Mullickbazar flower market and pausing at a few stalls to negotiate prices for marigold strands, we reached Jagannath Ghat. “This is my favourite ghat as this is where you get the best view of the Howrah bridge and the rail station.” The gigantic warehouses on the Strand made him wistful. “How I wish I could live in a building like this, overlooking the river! Living in Calcutta you forget about the existence of the river which is largely hidden from view unlike in Paris which is split by the Seine. There, the city expanded on both sides of the river across which there are about 20 bridges connecting the northern and the southern sides. All the attractions are along the Seine — Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay…. The Hooghly is much wider and the city has grown on its eastern side.”
Street-side tea shop: “I have put on 10 kilos in these three years! A paunch is accepted in Calcutta but in Paris it is frowned upon. I have to start cycling and walking like a Parisian once I am back,” Etienne had confessed after getting off the weighing scale at Calcutta Club from where our trip had started. A couple of hours later, he was happily digging into club kachauri and alur torkari, followed by a handsome helping of rabri at Sharma Sweets on Kalikrishna Tagore Street, run by his friend Shyam Barua. “Nothing breathes the Orient more than the streets of north Calcutta. Wherever you look, there is something happening. These small tea shops remind me of our street-side cafes, which are integral to the French way of life. Here you can get away from the chaos on the street while keeping a watch on a slice of outdoor life. They are cheap and no one asks you to leave even if you spend hours with a cup of coffee.”
College Street: Etienne could not find a single book in French on College Street but was startled to find some lesser-known titles of Alexandre Dumas in translation at several stalls. “This is the intellectual street of Calcutta with all the universities and bookstores. The Indian Coffee House here was a place for adda of Bengali intellectuals. It reminds me of the quartier Latin on the left bank of Paris which has bookstores of all sizes. This is for me one of the bridges between Paris and Calcutta…. For a kilometre on the promenade along the Seine, there are hundreds of small stores — some are just a box full of books. I used to go look for first editions of French or world literature titles as the area was close to our office.” On his last trip to College Street (“I used to come here often”), he picked up a Sunil Gangopadhyay translation.
Marble Palace: A last-minute call to Sourendro Mullick secured an entry into Marble Palace, the palatial Mullick residence on Muktaram Babu Street. Photography being prohibited in the rest of the property, we settled down on the verandah adjoining Sourendro’s piano room, where a marble statue of Pluto, the lord of the Underworld, stood reclining against his staff around which a snake was coiled. “Calcutta is in many ways a baroque city and nowhere else does it express that trait more lavishly. This place is a Calcutta of one man’s fantasy. Rajendro Mullick had found so many things that caught his fancy from across the world. It reminds me of the Palace of Versailles where too the idea was to add chandeliers and marble works to express wealth. It is a unique mix of kitsch but it is kitsch with a soul. This place also has the first private zoo of India. The building has been extremely well-preserved,” Etienne remarked.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, online edition / Home> Entertainment / Text by: Sudeshna Banerjee , Pictures by: Sanytan Ghosh / September 17th, 2015
Kolkata Book Fair: A look at over 4-decade history of Boi Mela
The first Boi Mela was organised in 1976, after two years of planning and a year after forming the Publishers & Booksellers Guild, which continues to organise the event
The Kolkata International Book 2019 fair begins on 31 January and ends on 11 February. (Photo: KIBF)
In the early years of 1970s, during their regular adda at the iconic Coffee House on College Street, a group of literature enthusiasts, mostly publishers, often discussed the Frankfurt Book Fair. The commercial trade fair of books was something they wanted to replicate in Kolkata, partly to give book lovers a place to exchange thoughts and ideas and get all their favourite writers’ works at one place, and partly to further the publishing business. Boi Mela or Calcutta Book Fair, which later became Kolkata Book fair, was thus conceptualised.
The idea was discussed, debated and finally given a shape in 1975, and the Publishers & Booksellers Guild came into being, with Sushil Mukherjea as its first president and Jayant Manaktala as general secretary.
The next year, in 1976, as many as 34 publishers got together and put up 56 stalls on the ground opposite Academy of Fine Arts, next to Kolkata’s landmark Victoria Memorial. Inaugurated by the then Education Minister Mrityunjay Bandyopadhyay on 5 March 1976, the ‘boi mela’ came to be known as the first Calcutta Book Fair. The 10-day affair culminated on 14 February. The book loving people of Kolkata welcomed the idea of Boi Mela and paid a 50 paisa per head entry fee to be part of the event.
The World Book Fair organised in New Delhi in 1972 and the 1974 National Book Fair organised by the National Book Trust in Kolkata were also the inspiration behind the big 1976 literary milestone for Kolkata.
The Publishers & Booksellers Guild went on to participate in the World Book Fair and the Frankfurt Book Fair also that year. Started on an experimental basis, the Kolkata Book Fair became an annual affair and the Publishers & Booksellers Guild has remained its organiser to this date.
With the 1977 edition too witnessing an equally enthusiastic participation and response, the Kolkata Book Fair required a bigger stage now. The 1978 event opposite the Rabindra Sadan ground reportedly saw participation of 112 publishers. In 1982, Peter Withers, the then director of Frankfurt Book Fair, visited the Kolkata do.
By now, the number of participating publishers had increased manifolds, and the Guild had started publishing names and details of all titles in print at the fair, besides a fair directory. Seminars and symposia also became permanent features. In 1983, then secretary general of International Publishers Association (IPA), Geneva, attended the inauguration ceremony. And it was the year the Kolkata Book Fair got its international accreditation. The IPA started mentioning the dates of the fair in its calendar every year.
In 1988, the book fair venue shifted to an even bigger ground, the Maidan nearer Esplanade, to accommodate the ever growing number of publishers and visitors. The vacant green area adjoining Park Street and Outram Road was developed by the Guild, which hosted the book fair there until 2007.
In 1991, a focal theme was introduced, on the lines of the Frankfurt Book Fair. The fair started to have one Indian state as its theme every year, aiming to highlight the literature and culture of the particular state. Assam emerged as the first focal theme.
From 1997, the focal theme has been a foreign country, starting with France.
Starting as a 10-day event, the Kolkata Book Fair gradually became a 12-day affair, usually starting in last week of January. The dates are fixed factoring in the pay day.
The Kolkata Book Fair has not been without its share of mishaps and controversies.
In 1997, six days into the fair, a massive fire broke out at the venue, reducing 1,00,000 books to ashes. A huge loss was reported. Reports said one person lost his life after suffering a heart attack at the venue following the fire. At the initiative of the then culture and home minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, stalls and other structures were re-constructed within three days, the Guild says in the official website of the Kolkata International Book Fair.
If fire destroyed the 1997 Boi Mela, it was heavy rain that played havoc the next year. A lot of books were damaged. However, publishers were covered by insurance this time around.
The year 1999 was special. The fair had Bangladesh as the focal theme, and Sheikh Hasina, the then Prime Minister of Bangladesh, visited the fair. She was visiting this part of Bengal after 27 long years.
For seven more years, Maidan remained the fair venue. By then environment activists had started raising voice against holding the mega event at the green space. In 2007, the organisers had gone ahead with Maidan as the venue for the 32nd Kolkata Book Fair. Some environmentalists had filed a public interest litigation against Maidan as the venue. A day before the inauguration, the Calcutta High Court gave its ruling in favour of the petitioners.
Forced to dismantle the structures raised at the venue, the Guild shifted the Boi Mela venue to the Salt Lake stadium. From 23 acres available to them at Maidan, the Kolkata Book Fair was shrunk to a 10-acre space, and could be started only int he second week of February.
According to a study done after the event, the footfall dropped to 8 lakh from 25 lakh the previous year.
In 2008, Park Circus was decided as the venue but that too invited a PIL on similar grounds, forcing the organisers to postpone the 33rd International Kolkata Book Fair.
A different group organised the fair, calling it Boimela 2008, at Salt Lake Stadium but failed to evoke similar response.
The Guilt filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court against the HC judgment. The then chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, intervened too, writing to the then Union home minister to get the fair back to Maidan.
The 33rd International Kolkata Book Fair was finally held at Milan Mela ground opposite Science City on an 18-acre land in 2009. Milan Mela is now the official venue for Kolkata Boi Mela. However, since 2018, the event has been taking place at the Central Park in Salt Lake due to ongoing restoration work at the Milan Mela ground.
Several efforts were made to increase the footfall. In 2010, it was first decided that the entry fee would be refunded if a visitor bought books worth Rs 200. Later, the entry fee was completely done away with. In 2011, the Publishers & Booksellers Guild got the NGO status. It can now use the Milan Mela ground at the rate that the state government pays for organising its fairs.
The year 2014 saw new event getting added to the Kolkata International Book Fair — Kolkata Literature Festival, on the lines of the famous Jaipur Literature Festival and Edinburgh Literature festival.
On 31 January 2019, the 43rd Kolkata International Book Fair is beginning. The Boi Mela this year pays tribute to the literary figures who passed away recently. The three halls mainly displaying English publications have been named after Nirendranath Chakraborty, Dibyendu Palit and Atin Bndyopadhyay, while the Little Magazine Pavilion will be named after Pinaki Thakur.
Guatemala is the theme country this year, and Ambassador of Guatemala Prof Euda Morales will be present when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee inaugurates the fair on Thursday.
For the residents of Kolkata, the Boi Mela is however not just about books. Like its Durga Puja, the Kolkata Book Fair is a festival that the City of Joy waits for the entire year and celebrates as a way of life. It’s an amalgamation of words, emotions, feelings, memories and nostalgia, with the stories passed down from generation to generation.
Apart from English, the Kolkata Book Fair has stalls selling Hindi, Urdu and other books too. It’s considered a good business time for publishers as each stall manages to sell around 500-10,000 books every day.
Food stalls also prove to be a big draw, besides the different activity corners.
Kolkata is all ready for a lot of adda, food, discussion on books and some public display of love for books and reading habit.
source: http://www.thestatesman.com / The Statesman / Home> Cities> Kolkata / by SNS Web / January 31st, 2019