Read, browse & buy books at Boiparai Boi Utsab at College Square ground till April 7
Telegraph | 3 April 2025
Gift books on birthdays, weddings, when invited to an occasion, or just like that.
Writers on stage at the inauguration of a book fest in College Square on Tuesday evening appealed to the audience to buy and gift books.
“In the past one or two decades, we have seen that we hesitate a little when it comes to gifting books. My appeal to all of you is to gift a book and do it with pride. Because books don’t decay,” poet Srijato Bandyopadhyay said.
The poet referred to his copy of Gitabitan, now 55 years old. It had been gifted to his parents at their wedding in 1970.
“I don’t know what else they got as gifts at their wedding, but the book has survived over the years,” he said.
Boiparai Boi Utsab at College Square ground, organised by Publishers and Booksellers Guild, will be on till April 7.
From 3pm to 8pm, 60 stalls are only selling books, giving space to established and new writers.
While book lovers trickled in on a weekday evening, several booksellers and publishers rued that they had to fight e-books, mobile phones and the vastness of the World Wide Web.
“We have to reinvent ourselves, and we have done it, too. For example, we have converted some books into comic strips to appeal to the young audience,” said Simi Gupta, marketing head, Deb Sahitya Parishad.
“A child who will pick up Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Anandmath (in comic form) now might be interested in reading the novel when he or she is older. We have to create that interest,” said Gupta.
The book fair in College Square gives book lovers and readers scope and space to choose books, a luxury that they often do not get at the celebrated Kolkata Book Fair because of the enormous crowds, the organisers said.
“While readers can choose books, some of the booksellers and publishers in the lanes and bylanes get more readers and attention in this book fair,” said Tridib Chatterjee, president, Publishers & Booksellers Guild.
“It is not that people are not reading or that there is no growth in the number of readers. The problem is that reading is not growing in the same proportion as the number of educated people is,” said Chatterjee.
People prefer to buy online, and College Street’s Boipara caters to that demand as well by feeding books to those distributors, said Chatterjee.
There are more sales online than in the shop, said Sayanti Pal of Barta Prakashan. “The number of people buying our books online is more than those who would come to the outlet. Footfall in the past three years has reduced by about 30 per cent,” said Pal.
Sudhangshu Sekhar Dey of Dey’s Publishing, the general secretary of the Publishers and Booksellers Guild, said festivals such as these promote the habit of reading books. “There would be authors and poets every day,” he said.
Sanjib Chattopadhyay, Joy Goswami and Subodh Sarkar were among those present on Tuesday.
As swimming resumed in College Square, schoolchildren dragged their parents to the stalls to browse and buy books.
“If books have survived till 2025, they will survive as long as there is life on earth,” said Srijato.