‘Fair’ is not that 'foul' after all!

Suddenly ran down the memory lane! Remember an essay you used to write, in those nascent years of school: ‘A Visit to a Fair’, or ‘Ekti melar avigyata’? For me the alluring part of the ‘mela’ has been the gilepis and the shingaras (samosas never taste good, shingaras do: “shingara re shingara, tor je dekhi shing khara!”) The stuffing, the deeply fried crunchy exterior … yummy! Food, I mean, has always been my thought for life. And as I visited the 36^th Kolkata Book Fair, the thought revived in me. Yes, you can satisfy your taste buds to the core at this fair. Apart from the Anandas, the Mitra and Ghoshes, the Penguins and the Projapotis, one food stall that has attracted me always and perhaps most of my friends here would acknowledge, is Ben-Fish. The batter fried fish, or the prawn pakoras, chilli fish or the fingers; I have adored dipping them in the sauce and lick my fingers till I went for a second serving. I missed my stall this time. The failure to locate a Ben-Fish stall was like, damn! Why did I join the crowd here? Okay, there’s no queue at the entrances for the tickets, okay, we are getting ‘free’ water pouches and hoarding them in our bag-packs, okay, there seems to an organized surveillance, okay, the traffic is too perfectly controlled t be true in Kolkata, so what? I still I missed my ‘butter’ fry! ;) You can never keep a Bengali away from a plate of biryani or junkies.. and after a tiring visit to well, yes, three stalls, we headed to the food court, devouring sheikh-kababs and luchi-kosha mangsho, and a few cups of very badly brewed cardamom tea. I admit that these days I am not reading much and finally I have been forced to hear this truth and have been severely penalized by my friends: they did not buy me any!

The most rewarding part of course in the day has been a glimpse at the crowd. Here are a few snippets. A newly fallen-in-love guy asked his beloved to go out for stall-hopping and the demure charm in the eyes of the girl resisting her lover’s wish yet simultaneously tempted to go, caught my attention. What was more interesting was another girl, perhaps a friend of the beloved here, encouraged the boy to take her out, inspite of her denials. Love blooming at the book fair, on a Saraswati puja day didn’t go unnoticed. An old man on his crutches, accompanied by his wife, came to the fair for a few particular books and it was very evident that he found it very difficult to walk through the busy crowd. Yet, his love for books did not hinder his struggle; he made his way to reach his stall and perhaps, he had got his books too. A little boy, hardly ten, had been graced with only one book this time and his constant wailing for a few more had not gone well with his parents. The ever-complaining mother, however, could not be convinced.

Local labor and daily wages. Remember the summer jobs hunts after the final days of school? I tried. Spent some fifty bucks for preparing a CV and applied at cafes and book shops. Yes, the western notion had not been of much help, yet I never gave up. Anyways, at one of the stalls, I came across two boys, who were both in the eleventh standard and had taken a part time assignment at the stall till the fair is over. Eavesdropping. No harm in it, right? “Taka chai boss, kichhu taka” is all I could decipher as the substance of their conversation, as they devoured their snacks standing at a corner of the stall.

“Boi dakchhe boi” and the theme song, (yes, Shantanu Moitra, Kaushiki Desikan and Monali Thakur again!) acted as a ‘parfait’ (am in that French-Italian mood this night. Hangover, you can say) background score for the book lovers. Going through the pages of a new book and then enamored with the fresh faint fragrance of the pages, I realized there were so many fictions that were being written around me. Some stories that can only touch your chord deep inside and you can feel the goodness around, the ability of the common crowd to absorb the little happiness disregarding everything else. ‘Mela’, surely unites. It unites friends, as in my case, it unites the book-worms with their coveted books; it unites foodies with platters of delicious cuisines. It unites souls: the one who bumped on me and said ‘sorry’, the man at the tea-stall who, smilingly said, ‘khuchro deben du taka please’ or the woman who came to us and said ‘ei prothom Japan’er stall hoechhe, bhetore dekhun’ are all strangers to me. The warmth mattered. The stories of the lovers, the old man, the little boy or two friends working at the stall have all united under one roof at the ‘Milan Mela’ complex to write narratives of their own. I am a bad writer and perhaps, a worse narrator. Just wanted to share the fictions that I witnessed. To wrap up, keeping in tune with the theme this year, ‘perdonatemi’ for my writing, it is just an attempt to capture moments. It is an attempt to feel good.