THE HAULS AT KOLKATA AND GUWAHATI

Almost everyone who knows me, especially my siblings know that I am dimwitted. But what they do not know is that occasionally some clever ideas strike me. One such idea struck me sometime in December when I read about the Kolkata International Book Fair in January-February 2026. I had been long dreaming of going to Kolkata to check out the books over there but somehow I couldn't go for various reasons. But now retired with a lot of time on hand I wanted to go but couldn't go alone by myself though it was what I wanted to dod. If I told my family that I wanted to go along there would be a lot of sulking so I put my clever idea into action. I told them I would take them to Kolkata to see the famous Kali temples at Kolkata and also to the Kamakhya temple at Guwahati. The idea was hailed as a brillian one (also an original one) and was immediately approved. It was then I enlightened them about the book fair at Kolkata and my wish to check it out. To cut a long story short sometime last month we landed in Kolkat on a Friday afternoon. 

After meeting a distant relative we left for the Kolkata International Book Fair and spent about two hours there. I have been to the Delhi World Book Fair a long time back but haven't seen anything like the one at Kolkata. I was awed by the size of the whole thing. There were almost thousand bookstalls that were artistically designed and crowded with book lovers unlike the dinky stalls in the Hyderabad Book Fair. However I was soon disappointed to discover that almost all the stalls were selling only books in Bangla, and there were very few stalls that had English books. I entered the Sahitya Akademy stall and found a copy of 'Bhabani Bhattacharya' by Shantinath K. Desai that I got for only fifteen rupees!

The next day was the first visit to College Street on Saturday in the evening. I found a copy of 'Storytellers @ Work', a Katha publication with one seller and a copy of 'The Art of Meditation' by Matthieu Ricardo. I oculdn't find anything interesting so we left as it was getting late and we had more than an hour's drive to our hotel. In fact the traffic was so bad that we reached the hotel after two and hours on the road. 

On Sunday morning we were back at College Street just around noon. Once again we sat in India Coffee House and had snacks and coffee before I set out along to look around the sellers. Sadly, I was disappointed to see that only a handful of sellers had their books on the pavement. But I was lucky as I managed to find some wonderful titles. 

The first find on Sunday at College Street was a beautiful hardcover copy of 'In Praise of Good Bookstores' by Jeff Deutsch that I grabbed as soon as I spotted it with a seller who had his small store open. This is the third book on bookstores/booksellers that I had found in the past few weeks. 

The next find was a copy of 'Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris' by Graham Dobb that was a fat volume that would take me weeks to read. But I bought it anyhow since it appeared very interestting and also, was a Picador title. 

I never seem to find stop finding books on Africa that I devour like anything. At College Street my next find was a copy of 'Into Africa' by Martin Dugard. It is a 'dramatic retelling' of the Stanley-Livingstone' story , and the cover had a blurb by Bill Bryson. I do not now remember how much I paid for it but it is worth whatever I paid for it.

Then I spotted a hardcover copy of 'Indian English Literature: A Critical Casebook' by Ramendranath Datta, Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal and Kanwar Dinesh Singh and edited by Suman Chakraborty that was another fat tome but seems very interesting as it had several essays on many novels that I have already read.

The next and last find was a copy of 'The Disordered Mind' by Eric R. Kandel that I found irresistible for some reason. On the back over I Read that Dr.Kandel was a Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist which was another reason not to leave this book behind. 

Then again we had lunch at India Coffee House  and went on a tour of the city in a WBTDC bus and visited a few places. Later in the evening we went to the Book Fair for a last visit. Once again I dropped in at the Sahitya Akademy stall to pick up three titles that I had seen on the previous visit but had not bought. 

I picked up a copy of the book 'Nissim Ezekiel' by Shakuntala Bhavani as I've been reading Ezekiel's poety since my college days. 

I also picked up the monograph on 'Bhagwati Charan Varma' by Shrilal Shukla though I vaguely remember reading about Verma somewhere. I picked it up becaue it was by Shrilal Shukla whose 'Raag Darbari' is one of my favorite titles.

I. had seen a similar book on the poet Agha Shahid Ali on the previous visit but I couldn't find it anymore. I was a bit disappointed that I missed it. Later while going around I spotted a 'Rare and Old Books stall. I eagerly went in but found nothing interesting except a basic title on Africa. The stall keeper first said three hundred and fifty rupees for it but later claimed he had said five hundred and fifty rupees which was when I kept it back and walked out of the stall. 

My last visit was to the stall of The Hindu Group I was able to locate at last. I saw a copy of 'The Noorani Records' in the books they had on display and bought it. I had not able to find a single title by AG Noorani especially his books on Kashmir and Hyderabad but I was glad I was able to find 'The Noorani Records' that I am sure has a lot of good essays by Noorani. It did not come cheap though as I had to shell out something more than six hundred rupees for it. 

The next day, a Monday, we flew out to Guwahati and landed around two in the afternoon. After lunch we raced to go on the Brahmaputra cruise before reaching the hotel in the evening. It was an hour's cruise in the vast Brahmaputra river watching the sunset and munching on the snacks that were served while old Hindi romantic songs played. 

On Tuesday in the morning we visited the Kamakhya tempe and were able to come out within ten minutes though people had warned us it would take somewhere around three to six hours to have a glimpse of the deity. Then we set out for lunch and afterwards shopping at Fancy/Phansi bazaar that I was told was the place to shop for stuff. On the way I saw a row of bookshops with 'Old Books' written on a few of their boards. They appeared like bookshops selling textbooks of NCERT, CBSE and the like. These stores I later realized were not far from Brahmaputra Hotel where we had a simple lunch. After lunch I told my family to go ahead with their shopping while I decided to check out the bookstores on the road called Pan Bazaar.

I had been looking for a copy of 'Understanding India's Northeast: A Reporter's Journal' by Rupa Chinai that I had read about somewhere. I had narrowly missed buying a copy that came up on a sale on a WhatsApp group a couple of months ago and desperately wanted to get hold of a copy and was determined to search everywhere for it.

At one of the bookstores on Pan Bazaar road I found a stack of old books tied up with a slender rope and kept on the pavement outside the store. I checked the titles and found a copy of 'An Indian Summer' by James Cameron. I have a copy of this wonderful book about India in the 50s and 60s by a foreign journalist but decided to buy the copy I saw in Pan Bazaar. 

In another store on the opposite side of the road there was a similar stack of old books tied up with a rope and kept on the pavement in front of the store. They had more stacks inside the store kept on the floor. I went through all the titles and found a small treasure trove of travel titles.

I picked up a copy of 'The Curry Coast' by Binoo K. Johan and also a copy of 'Loitering with Intent: Diary of a Happy Traveler by Ritu Menon that I thought was all I wanted to buy. But my eyes spotted the best find of the day and it was a Harvill edition of 'The Snow Leopard' by Peter Matthiessen that I immediately pulled out of the stack. All these four books did not cost me more than five hundred rupees in all. 

I decided to try my luck at another store and showed the cover of 'Understanding Indian's Northeast: A Reporter's Journal' that was on my phone to the person at store. He told me I might be able to find it at 'Modern' across the road. I crossed the road but couldn't locate 'Modern' at first and was about to go back when I decided to take a few more steps ahead and was glad I did because I spotted an ancient looking board above a store that saidd 'The Modern Book Dept- Largest Collection of Books and Maps on North East India' that had my pulse racing. I thought I would be able to find Rupa Chinai's book in the store.

The elderly assistant in the store told me the book was not available but nevertheless took my name and number to note down and contact me in case a copy turned up. The owner, an elderly and distinguished looking person, who was on the mobile phone talking with someone, turned his attention to me and said he knew the author and might be able to get hold of a copy for me. He also said there was a rare book section inside and asked me if I wanted to take a look. I was sorely tempted but it was getting late and I had to leave. But before leaving I picked up a copy of 'India's North-East in Flames' by VIK Sarin that had a vivid cover. 

The haul at Guwahati was an unexpected and lucky one as I had not expected to come across bookstores and had also not thought of asking about second-hand bookstores around. I was pleased with the titles I found and doubly pleased that all the five titles in the haul were travel titles. In all I picked up sixteen books on the Kolkata-Guwahati trip.