Coming Back to Life

Books,that went out of print several years ago,have found a news lease of life in this book fair

Trailokyanath Mukherjee is a name that this generation doesn’t recognize immediately. “It’s really unfortunate that you haven’t read his works as a child. But it’s a fault of the times I guess. It hasn’t given you the leisure to enjoy the little things in life,” points out Raghab Bandopadhyay of Charchapad Publishers,rather sarcastically. In his small stall at the Kolkata Book Fair,Bandyopadhyay is trying to introduce this generation to the phenomenon that was Mukherjee. “He was not just a delightful story-teller and helped shaping Bengali literature in the 19th century,but he was one of the most eminent scholars of the time. His involvement in the industrial development of the times was remarkable. He even travelled to London during Queen Victoria’s reign to help organize a possibly industry-related exhibition,” says Bandyopadhyay. Mukherjee,a Brahmin,had to go undergo ritualistic processes of ablutions for crossing the Atlantic Ocean,then considered a breach of religious loyalties. After he came back,he wrote A Visit to Europe in English which was published in 1889 and later translated into Bengali by Parimal Goswami. Charchapad had re-launched the book last year,over two decades after it went out of print,and has brought it to the fair this year. The publishers have also come out with an illustrated collection of Mukherjee’s ghost stories,which were a rage in his times and in the early 20th century. “These stories have been compiled from books that have gone out of print over 20 years back. We wanted to resurrect his legacy this book fair,” says Bandyopadhyay.

He has for company the likes of Thema Books which has re-published the Thema Book of Naxalite Poetry written by Sumanta Banerjee. “The book was written in the late ’80s and we are making fresh copies available more than five years after it went out of print,” says a representative of the publishers. With the resurgence in interest in Naxalite history,thanks to the intensifying Maoist menace,the re-print is perfectly timed. The book compiles ‘literary material drawn from the most varied sources,both printed and oral,represents a wide range of authorship including urban,rural and tribal activists,some of the martyrs themselves,traditional folk singers,and established poets’. Monfakira,a publishing company floated by a group of ‘social activists’ have come out with the complete screenplay of a documentary on the Chenchu tribe made by late filmmaker Barin Saha. “The documentary was made several years ago. There’s just one copy of the film in the national archives in Pune. Saha himself passed away more than five years ago. The shot descriptions,text of the commentary etc documents the realities of one of the oldest tribes in India,” said a representative of Mon Fakira. Lalmati,another city based publication,has reprinted,almost after 30 years,copies of Hemendra Kumar Roy’s translation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. “It’s the only translation available in Bengali. Copies of the book were not available for the past 30-40 years. We acquired rights and published it again this year,” says Nemai Gharai of Lalmati. The book was originally translated and published in 1887.