Book lane

TITHI Chakraborty and Pradeep Sen are just two of the young hopefuls scouring the shelves of College Street. The first year students have co...

TITHI Chakraborty and Pradeep Sen are just two of the young hopefuls scouring the shelves of College Street. The first year students have come down all the way from Siliguri in search of Abbot8217;s biography of Napolean. 8216;8216;But we haven8217;t found it as yet,8217;8217; says Tithi regretfully.

Once upon a time, such regret would have been unheard of in College Street, that mecca for generations of bibliophiles. It was said that there was no book published that could not be procured in the unassuming shelves of the rows of ramshackle shops that flank the hallowed gates of Presidency College. They could be old, they could be worn, sometimes they made you wait, yes, but even the rarest of books could be picked up here for a bargain.

But then, Tithi and Pradeep are in a minority today, looking for a source book at a time when most of their contemporaries are happy with guides and textbooks. 8216;8216;The book they8217;re looking for is rare, one copy lands up maybe once a month,8217;8217; says Chanchal Bose of stall no. 35, busy counting change for a group of girls who have just bought a dated edition of Advanced Course in Practical Physics, a text book for FYBSc, at a price much lower than the printed tag.

Once upon a time College Street was the mecca for bibliophiles.There was hardly a book, insist regulars, that could not be found in the unassuming shelves of the rows of ramshackle shops that flank Presidency College. There8217;s a chance though, that College Street will not end up as yet another sad story from Kolkata.

8216;8216;Thirty years ago, we used to get customers from Madras,8217;8217; recalls Hussain, 56, at stall no. 68. 8216;8216;One gentleman came to me looking for books on Tibetan Buddhism and the works of Atish Dipankar who travelled from Bengal to Tibet in the 15th century. When I found a few volumes for him, he was so overwhelmed he gave me Rs 2000 instead of Rs 1500 I asked for.8217;8217;

A far cry, indeed, from 2003, when Hussain confesses most of his monthly earnings of Rs 5000 comes from selling prescribed texts.

There8217;s a chance, though, that College Street will not end up as yet another sad story from Kolkata. In 1998, the CPM-led Kolkata Municipal Corporation marked a two sq km area here as a heritage zone in 1998. Charge of the municipal body has since passed over to the Congress, and the party8217;s mayor is quick to pooh-pooh that initiative as a baby step. 8216;8216;We are working on a proposal to restore the spirit of 19th century Kolkata here with funds from Asian Development Bank,8217;8217; says mayor Subrata Mukherjee, indicating that some Rs 10 crore had been set aside for the project.

The plans include clearing the narrow pavements of everything other than the 500-odd bookstalls and the marking of weekends as special book-dealing days, when casual booksellers will be allowed to stack their wares on the pavements themselves.

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The entire stretch covering Calcutta University, Presidency and Sanskrit College, Gole Dighi, Mahabodhi Society, Coffee House and several other 19th century establishments will be adorned with streetlights reminiscent of the gaslights of colonial Calcutta. The big shops on the street, too, will be required to recast themselves somewhat in keeping with the spirit.

While the proposal hasn8217;t struck much of a chord with the small booksellers, some big bookshops like Chuckervertty, Chatterjee 038; Co., established in 1910, are happy. 8216;8216;We would have more buyers as the place will have a book fair-like ambience throughout the year,8217;8217; says Uday Goswami, manager of the huge book shop.

That is the kind of support Mukherjee, at least, is looking for. 8216;8216;We will spend the money not only for the beautification, but also to tell book-lovers that we respect your sentiments. Then it will be upto the booksellers to generate interest,8217;8217; says the mayor. 8216;8216;We8217;re looking at starting work by late-October.8217;8217;

However, Mukherjee 8212; whose other pet project of a 8216;Kolkata Gate8217; ran into controversy before being shelved a while ago 8212; says that he will get the entire plan, including the funds, cleared with the state government.

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Closer to the ground, Ratan Banik, a pavement bookseller, has a pertinent question. Will the Rs 10 crore, he asks, be able to take on the Internet and the photocopy machine and the dwindling number of sources and buyers of old books?

Mukherjee isn8217;t taking responsibility for that.