LOVE FOR LITTLE MAGAZINES

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.