Kolkata Boi Mela (Book Fair), Part 2

The crowds at the Boi Mela (the Bengali term for Book Fair), are light during the first few days, but later in the week the crowd density surges. Little children burble, slightly older children screech, teenagers make and break romances with swipes of their cellphones, harassed parents try to keep up with the madness, and everyone is snacking. What can seem like chaos to foreigners is extraordinarily well-organized, as Kolkata's dense networks of families, friends, workplace circles and neighborhood affiliations spontaneously assemble, disperse and reassemble. The photo shows a musical performance close to the center of the Boi Mela. The musical diversity of South Asia is as astounding as its linguistic and cultural diversity.

An Expressionist moonscape. Carnivals and festivals have a special energy when the sun goes down, and the Boi Mela only really comes to life after dark. The United States has some wonderful book fairs in its own right, but there's nothing comparable to the sheer energy of the Boi Mela's crowds, the diversity of its publications, and the fact that you can find every viewpoint under the sun (and plenty more under the moon). I keep expecting Geralt and Ciri to emerge from some stall with a stack of well-worn magic tomes.

This is one of the Boi Mela's volunteers at the France pavilion, in a section showcasing France's contributions to world cuisine, literature and aviation. In fact, France has fascinating and largely underappreciated connections to Indian culture which go back to the late 18th century. Incidentally, there is an enormous divide between the generations in Kolkata -- you can literally read the history encoded in human bodies, from gaunt farmers who survived near-famine conditions to the well-nourished bodies of today's middle class college students. It took me months to realize that every single food stall in Bengal is a small but explicit act of defiance of the successive famines which devastated Bengal since 1770.

This is the Bangladesh pavilion, where writers, authors and vendors from India's eastern neighbor have gathered. Bengali is one of the most underappreciated and important languages of our planet, with around 240 million speakers in West Bengal and in Bangladesh -- the only ones which are bigger are English, Spanish, Chinese and Hindi. I'm currently learning Bengali, and though my skills are rudimentary, I can confirm that it is a wondrously poetic language, blessed with a kind of concision in its grammar and verb forms which makes for amazing literature.   

The beating heart of the Boi Mela is the Little Magazine pavilion, where independent authors, poets, dramatists, and writers of every age, aesthetic outlook, and ideological persuasion gather. The priority of the publishing industry is profit, not quality, so non-commercial spaces like this are far more important than many people realize.