Page in a city's good books

Through summer's sweltering heat, through the monsoon's downpours and even after Kolkata's recent accumulation of shopping malls, Sandhya Tiwary, 20, and her friends remain loyal to their afternoon strolls through the crowded, muddy lanes of College Street, long known as India's “neighbourhood of books''.

It is 3pm, just after their university classes. On a bustling street corner, Tiwary and her friends eat a quick lunch of Kolkata's favourite street food: steaming, egg-dipped chicken Kathi rolls — with a side of freshly churned yoghurt served in a salmon-coloured earthen pot. Then the group takes off to browse the second-hand — and sometimes third- or fourth-hand — books.

The 1,200 dilapidated bookstore kiosks create a maze of roadside cubbyholes stacked with dusty dictionaries in Hindi, underlined chemistry textbooks in Urdu and dozens of worn copies of a three-volume History of West Bengal. Nearby are piles of Mars and Venus in the Bedroom.

With booksellers bargaining in Bengali, the air fills with the merchants' favourite phrases. “Nowhere else on this green Earth is such a deal,'' or “One fine day, you will know you have made a real fool of me for this generous price''.

Some young customers come with lists of books they need for school. If a seller doesn't have a particular book, he will simply shout — extremely loudly — to a fellow shopkeeper for the title, usually screaming the name of the book thrice in quick succession. As in “Sun Also Rises, Sun Also Rises, Sun Also Rises'' or “Kite Runner, Kite Runner, Kite Runner''. Eventually, a young worker will come sprinting out of an alleyway, requested book in hand.

The constant yelling of famous book titles mixes with the constant honking of car and rickshaw horns. “This street, this way of life — of buying books, of being together — is a grand part of our heritage,'' said Tiwary, a geography student at the University of Calcutta, which is just around the block.

Corner of reality

Suddenly, several herds of sheep toddle by on their way to a nearby market. The animals step among piles of books. Shopkeepers tsk, dusting off their wares. Tiwary laughs and laughs for several minutes. Her friend also cannot stop giggling.

“Only in our India, only in our Kolkata,'' Tiwary says over the earsplitting baa-ing and meh-ing of sheep. “We don't want to lose this. It's the real Kolkata.''

At 3.45pm, a rickshaw-puller naps inside his carriage, which is loaded with physics books.

A bookworm has hired him to pull his load through the crowded streets of the city when he is done shopping.

As he sleeps, his calloused feet dangle over a shopkeeper's haphazardly arranged stacks of medical textbooks, copies of various works of Marcel Proust, along with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

At 4pm it starts raining. Shopkeepers hustle to cover their books with blue plastic tarpaulin.

Booksellers estimate that the last five generations of city-dwellers have shopped these narrow lanes.

Dozens of institutions of higher learning are within walking distance.

The city has tried to shut down the market, lamented several booksellers gathered in the rain. Officials wanted this neighbourhood of books to relocate to a climate-controlled “book mall'', which will be built by 2009. No sheep allowed, one bookseller giggled.

The booksellers believe they will win, now that the book mall and plans to move the stalls have been delayed.
In all likelihood, the book mall and College Street will eventually coexist in this city of 14 million that loves to read.

With a strong literary tradition, Kolkata has given birth to some of India's most famous writers, including Rabindranath Tagore, who won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature for Gitanjali, his epic verse. He is seen as the Leo Tolstoy of India.

At 4.10pm, to get out of the still-pouring rain, a rush of young people climbs several flights of dingy, winding stairs, past peeling paint and posters advertising English classes to prospective call centre employees.

At the top of the stairs, they find the warehouse-like Indian Coffee House, a legendary café that has attracted the city's intelligentsia for decades. Unlike other trendier chain coffeehouses in newer malls, no one here has their laptops open. There is no internet access. No flat-screen TVs, no triple-shot skim vanilla lattes and no air-conditioning.

This gathering is the city's afternoon adda, a ritual kibitzing session and a favourite pastime in Bengali culture. It is a mix of high-level banter over ancient literature, debates over India's role in geopolitics and perhaps a quick chat about the latest cricket scores.

A cross section of Bengali literati and chatterati sit in hard-backed chairs under dozens of spinning ceiling fans as polite-looking waiters in feathered turbans and bowties serve kabiraji: cutlets of chicken, mutton, fish or shrimp fried with coats of egg, ginger and garlic.

Refreshments include cold milky coffee or chai.

For the next hour, Mihir Bhatta, 69, a retired linguistics professor, and his friends will hold a traditional adda.

At 4.30pm they debated the ongoing controversy over local farmers protesting the forced sale of their land to make way for a car factory.

By 5.30pm, the topic was the need for more Bengali literary magazines.

“We like it here,'' Bhatta said. “And when we are finished, we can go browsing for books — to see if our ideas are right!''