This year, the city's annual affair with its literary legacy remains mired in coincidental celebrations.
The 34th edition of the Kolkata Book Fair is not just part of the 150 birth anniversary of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, but also marks the centennial year of the revolution in Mexico — the focus country at this year's fair.
It also comes at a time when West Bengal continues to mourn the passing of it's longest serving chief minister, Jyoti Basu, who took office a year after the first book fair was held on March 1976. Much of the evolution of the Boi Mela, as is the common parlance, into a major event in the country's literary calender took place during Basu's tenure.
Unsurprisingly then, the fair's organisers — Publishers & Booksellers Guild — called for a minute of silence in Basu's memory.
“He (Basu) was an ardent book lover and the close friend of the book fair,” the Guild's vice-president Suprakash Basu said at the inaugural event of the fair on Monday.
Mexican author Jorge Volpi, who along with chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, formally opened the fair, spoke of 'magic realism' as a defining notion of Latin American literature. But a realism of a different kind, too, is finding its way into what was once strictly a literary pursuit.
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Betraying the political fault lines that divide the state, the mouthpieces of both the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress have bought space at Milan Mela, literally 'the meeting ground', where the fair will be held from January 27 to February 7.
However, there are other practical concerns that could be more difficult to contend with. Parts of the fair ground, which were recently called “a world-class facility” by the West Bengal industry secretary, are hardly fit for walking.
Alongside, adequate transport at the almost sub-urban venue also remains a cause for concern.
But, as Bhattacharjee said in his address since “society has no identity without books”, hopefully Kolkata will reaffirm, in numbers, that retains an identity and an appetite for the written word.