Roaming
in the Kolkata International Book Fair, 2012, I feel it in a different way, no search for my favorite
books, lonely I move, lonely I remember someone who is not with me, yet living
with me, as if, I am in a fantasy of love, a top-most feeling of real love sworn. I feel no courage to see the focal theme pavilion on Italia, or the
200 years’ celebration of Charles Dickens, or books on one hundred and fifty
years celebration of Nobel award winning poet Rabindranath Tagore, or of Swami Bibekananda,
or books on one hundred and twelve years of poet Kaji Najrul Islam. Lastly I decided to sit at the little
magazines’ pavilion. I have to put calmness in my bleeding mind.
I found
no crowd therein, a forlorn singing; marvelous self publishers, authors,
editors are sitting with delight as if they have won the world; you may praise or
purchase their products, it is not their concern, they come here to correctly
place their endeavour to find new writers and new young thinkers on literature
and culture, and finding newness of thinking brains is their pride and symbol of
existence with war of words, in new form and content
Reading
comes from eagerness to know,
Searching
comes from selection and favored esteem,
And all
visitors do not come from one platform
Some come
to search, some come to enjoy,
Some come
to sell; some come to know the unknown.
I sit
on a chair at a table of a renowned little Bengali magazine
I see
rows of tables where the enthusiastic worker and devotees of small presses
Are burning
like incessant candles, and a few visitors are watching and enquiring
something,
And I
cannot say what they are enquiring about, and I find two or three foreigners
there.
The message
is something frustrating,
A
crowd and a little magazine are not shared like blossoms,
If one
goes to morning work, other goes to create words’ reflections,
The sun
has the lighting power to emblazon the reflection with the message of love,
The morning
worker gets the message that he does notice he has shared.
One
customer stands before the displaying table and chooses a book,
Perhaps
he missed the book that is also available in a big publishing house,
And
he makes an argument, “Why the commission for selling of the book will not be allowed
Beyond
15 percent whereas that big publisher sells the book at a reduced rate by 25
percent less.”
My
friend does not argue much, and say, “Please take it, at Rs.180.00
Which
is nearly 20 percent less, and I cannot come down more.”
When
the transaction is complete, the customer takes a close view of the book
purchased,
And
one word just comes out, “O! It is a new edition for Kolkata Book Fair, 2012.”
My
friend just tells me that he sells it at a certain loss to compete the big
publishing houses here.
New
generation youth comes with smiling, and on our displying table one young women
Comes and
just makes an appeal, “Please attend the meeting on the university campus,
And
we are inviting all editors of small presses to say their views on little mags.”
I
look at the speaker, a new and energetic woman face that blooms the search
For a visionery servey of the young world, with pacifying eyes to love the world,
And I am happy to see the waving of her journey for counting the possibilities of existence,
And
it may be a research work for little magazines; it may get published or debated, or rewarded,
Yet
these little magazines will not get lift to be a commercially live, without advertising.
