Boi Mela!

The sights one gets to see at the Kolkata Book Fair verge more and more on the ridiculous with every passing year. For the average Bengali visitor it’s Benfish first, then books (and balloons for babai). It is a regular family outing; a picnic with the wife and kids.

The women wear heavy make-up and heavier jewelry. The father directs the kids into the store. The mother follows them in with an air of casual indifference. She flips through the pages of a few books without paying much attention to it. The kids run around the store till they get tired (occasionally you hear the mother calling out “Totun... Bunty...”). The father (who has meanwhile been looking through some of the books) will then call the kids to him and pull out certain books—a Scott, a Dickens, maybe an abridged version of Moby Dick—and say things to the effect that these are classics; classics are good to read; they should read these books; and that he had read them when he was their age (the abridged version of course; probably forced to go through them as a textbook in school). When everyone gets bored they leave for the next stall after having bought one of the classics and a couple of story books which the children might read (the classics will remain neglected on the shelves for many years to come—the kids are not interested, the father is too busy, and the mother has her silly TV serials to watch).

Then one gets to see the young Bong college crowd. They come with their guitars and sit down in groups on the ground. They sing popular ‘Bangla rock’ songs, showing everyone who might happen to look their way that they are enjoying themselves at the annual Kolkata Book Fair. The first day they come only with guitars (one per group). The next day they bring tambourines (and more guitars). The day after that we see tambours. Those who cannot play any instruments sing the lines they know and keep the beat by clapping hands. Each day the number of groups increase. Since the theme stall attracts the most number of people, all these groups—all of them—will sit around the theme, in their Che Guevara T-shirts, so that they are noticed by the people who are standing in the long line for getting into the theme stall.

The only reason that most people visit the theme is that it is the theme. The theme stall is the largest stall in the fair. People expect to see something different inside. When they finally get inside they see…books. Since the books in this particular stall are in the language of the guest nation, much of it makes no sense to the majority. So then these people who have stood for an hour in the sun to get into the stall quickly take a perfunctory round of the stall and head for the exit. In the theme stall this year I heard one soul complain: “Aekhaneyoto boi”. What was he expecting to see? A blue elephant?

Near the exit of the theme stall for this year (Spain) was the entrance to the Australian stall. Since the stall was shaped in the form of the Ayers Rock (not that the people realized this—all they saw was a funny looking stall), people were curious to see what was inside and a long line had quickly formed outside this one. On seeing this line, one young man, emerging out of the theme stall with his friends, grumbled: “Dur! Aabar line-e daratey hobe?” It’s not that anyone was forcing him to visit the Australian stall. It’s not that he wanted to learn about Australia (he didn’t even know the stall was about Australia). He had just come out of one stall (without really having seen anything inside) and since others were standing in a line for another stall, he too joined them. This is the kind of herd mentality that characterizes the people you see at the Book Fair. It is a reflection of the attitude of the people of this state and this country.

Such people are generally bored (because they do the same thing over and over again without any real interest). The slightest tamasha is a most welcome break. On the last day of the fair, the entire crowd followed security guards who had just caught a thief stealing books. Seeing a huge group of people moving en masse in one direction, more people joined the mob, not knowing what was going on but hoping that the Book Fair would at last have something more interesting to offer than…books.

Even a one-time visitor to the Kolkata Book Fair rarely escapes the pretentious Bengali man of culture. He has read his Lacan-Foucault-Derrida and, of course, his Camus-Kafka-Marx. He may not be able to explain their concepts to the uninitiated (because these concepts are not clear in his head itself), but he would love to converse with such lay men because it provides the perfect opportunity to name-drop without getting exposed and to stun people with the seeming depth of their shallow learning.

In a few years’ time half the space at the Book Fair will be devoted to food stalls and to entertainment (this year’s fair even featured a silly ride which attracted huge numbers and which, I’m told, made good money). The size and the number of food stalls are increasing every year: a large section of the fair grounds is reserved for food stalls. Everyone ends up there. After all, that is why they go to the Book Fair.