36th Kolkata Book Fair ends

A chat between "Premio Strega" winning author Dacia Maraini of Italy and Mandira Sen was the toast of Saturday.

Further vivifying the literary glimmer of the evening, Campiello Europe prize winning author Pietro Grossi went on stage to regale the audience with his conjectures on sports and its relation to literature and life.

Italy was the focal theme this year.

Kolkata witnessed a colourful art form at the fair this year when renowned American street & chalk artist Tracy Lee Stum created a 3D masterpiece in front of the American pavilion.

There were unsavoury moments too.

On Jan 30, in a bizzare move, the Kolkata Book Fair authorities said they switched off power during the interaction of Pakistan cricket and politician Imran Khan with media because the press meet that was to end in five minutes had stretched nearly 45 minutes.

"We did switch off power because the next programme could not be started. So we were forced to do so," Kolkata Book Fair organizer´s top official Tridib Chatterjee told a news channel.

Imran was addressing media after a literary interaction at the book fair.

On Feb 1 on the other hand, the scheduled book launch of exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen was cancelled by the organizers over protests by a religious group.

Protesters reportedly called police and objected the release of the book and even planned to demonstrate against the launch at the fair.

The organizers of the fair, the Booksellers and Publishers Guild, had planned to launch the book titled ´Nirbashan´ (meaning exile) at the AC hall. However, they decided to cancel the event.

However, the book was later released by the publishers at their own stall in the fair.

Interestingly, keeping in mind the issues faced by the common people in the other years, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had kept arrangement for free drinking water pouches.

But it seems that the civic sense among the civilians is decreasing exponentially.

After drinking the water they threw away the packets almost anywhere and everywhere, ignoring the trash bins.

Talking about this, Sayani, one of the visitors said: "It would have been better if there were more dustbins. People are throwing the pouches everywhere and eventually turning the place dirty."

The Kolkatans will hope that the Kolkata Book Fair comes back more strongly and more professionally managed in the next year.

After this year's mega success the book lovers will have to wait for another year to make it even bigger.



(Reporting by Tania Roy, Photos by Avishek Mitra)