He was a great help in the Kolkata Book Fair

Here is the twenty sixth unforgettable character in my life …

When we attended the Calcutta Book Fair for the first time in 1992, we had innumerable first-time experiences. The most memorable was the setting up of the stall. We had requested for the smallest space and were accordingly allotted a ten feet by ten feet area with tarpaulin roof. That was the normal practice – whoever rented the stalls had to get the decorations done by themselves.

Immediately we arrived at the venue to identify our location and take over the stall, we were besieged by hordes of people. They were decorators who wanted to take our contract. They explained their ideas and we listened and asked for rough financial estimates. In between, we rested in the makeshift tea stalls and pondered over the pros and cons. Our budget was literally a shoestring one. We had scraped together the minimum finance necessary to book the stalls and had vague estimates but the estimates of the field decorators floored us. It was at this point of time that the cousin of one of my partners came to our rescue.
He assured us that he would get the stall set up and would see that the expenses were kept to the barest minimum. He was experienced in such work because he had a couple of friends who built the local Saraswati puja pandals. They were in the know of things and, since the fair was being held during the Saraswati pujas, we heaved a sigh of relief. He arranged to shift bamboos and plywood to the venue and he and his team stayed up three nights to erect the structure.
When the fair doors were thrown open, ours was one of the stalls that was complete in all respects. He was our savior in the two subsequent years 1993 and 1995 that we participated in the Calcutta Book fair.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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