A fair opportunity

One of my fondest memories of the Kolkata Book Fair will be that of meeting Tintin. I was a kid, and it was unbelievable to shake hands with Hergé’s creation, reporter Tintin, who stood in front of a book stall at the fair sometime in the early 1980s. I didn’t realise then that it was a fine piece of acting by some talented actor. The memories came back while cheking the news about the recent 34th International Kolkata Book Fair and the 19th New Delhi World Book Fair. So I ventured to find out the views on and memories of book fairs from others who are deep into books.

‘With so many book stores in the city, why would you need a book fair?’ I naively ask Kolkata-based poet Subodh Sarkar. “It’s only at the book fair that we writers and poets get to interact with our readers directly. That’s not possible in some book shop,” he says. For him, the Kolkata Book Fair, which is “growing in vigour”, is the “most important” event in the city’s calendar.

Full report here  Sakaal