Curtains to go up on Kolkata’s biggest festival after Durga Puja — the book fair

Kolkata Book Fair: A nostalgic event for residents, a celebration of literature, friendships, and childhood memories.

Residents of Kolkata who love the written word — most people in the city do — are planning the next two weeks around the book fair, an occasion they will use to catch up with old friends and new books.

The event, Kolkata’s largest after Durga Puja, will be held this year from January 28 to February 9 and, like previous years, appears set to be driven more by emotion than literature. Most people visit the fair because it makes them revisit their childhood, a trip they don’t want to skip at any cost.

“I know many families who save money all year so that they don’t fall short of cash while buying their favourite books at the fair. As a child I used to hold my mother’s hand and come all the way to Kolkata to visit the fair; today I am a resident of Kolkata and I hold my daughter’s hand into the fair. This year is more special for me because my students will be participating in a quiz competition,” Kabita Ghosh, a teacher at the Chittaranjan Colony Hindu Vidyapeeth for Girls, said.

Delhi-based journalist Saikat Niyogi never missed the fair even after moving out of Kolkata, returning home every January from 2006 until 2020, unable to come ever since due to personal circumstances. “But all I think about during that period is the fair. How does it look now? Has anything changed? Are youngsters still as crazy about it as we were? Seems they still are,” Mr. Niyogi said.

He is still contemplating whether he should get on a plane to Kolkata. “The fair is linked with each stage of my life — childhood, adolescence, youth — as with the lives so many others. And it’s braided with people who were with you at those stages of life,” Mr. Niyogi said.

Souvik Ghoshal, also a school teacher and editor of Other Voice magazine, said the Kolkata Book Fair was special because it saw direct contact between publishers, authors and readers and also because it provided a big roof to the little magazines. “This year I will be keeping an eye on translations of foreign literature into Bengali. Many people have been doing good work in this area of late. This year also marks the centenary of the Communist Party of India. I will be particularly interested in what books are being published related to that,” Mr. Ghoshal said.

Richa Wahi, who runs Word Munchers, said, “Anyone growing up in this city can vouch for the fact that the book fair is an event we plan our lives around. From visiting the fair with parents and coming home with packets full of books, to taking my students there to encourage them to read and invest in books, every visit has been memorable. ‘Let’s meet at the book fair’ has been a standard statement during the period.”