Fair Play

If your visit to the book fair is planned to be a nostalgic exercise,fuelled by fond memories of oil-soaked Benfish butterfries and dusty maidan,then consider yourself warned. Everything is disappointingly small in the Milon Mela book fair-the sprawl,the stall,the crowds and even the serpentine queues outside the Dey’s and Ananda Publishers book stall.

You will end up feeling wistful about something that is as good as impossible today-a book fair at Maidan.

But not every pair of legs visiting the Milon Mela grounds will be governed by preconceived notion or expectations. Indeed,quite a few years have passed since the book fair shifted out of Maidan and the time is ripe enough for us to make new memories. So Subhankar and Sarita will bunk college on a weekday and make a cross-city excursion to the By-pass. They will complain about the traffic and the long commuting hours but will end up spending hours walking around the Milon MEla grounds,without even stopping at a stall,lost in each other eyes.

They will make a cursory visit to the Mexican stall,a bizarre yet beautiful structure with fluttering flags and vibrant red walls,jostling with crowds to catch a glimpse of a traditional Mexican dance.

Yes,there will be thousands of Subhankar and Saritas who will make their own memories with the book fair this year.

They will forget all about the dust that ended up matting Sarita’s perfectly shampooed hair; they will forget that half of the stalls they visited were functioning without electricity. The intense bladder-filled moments when Subhankar had to run from one end of the fair to the other to find a toilet,will also be forgotten. Indeed,the disappointment of not finding anything of interest at the China stall (where none of the items were for sale) will also be a distant memory.

Book Fair 2010,with its little disappointments and glaring instances of mismanagement,will be remembered with fondness. So the Booksellers Guild should take a bow,they have made the book fair a success by just organising it.