Kolkata Book Fair

A fair that was started by the Kolkata Publishers' and Booksellers' Guild in 1976 mainly to compensate the lack of Book Stores and supplement the Book district of college street has turned into the biggest Non Trade Book Fare in the world. Its a non trade book fair because this winter fair held in Kolkata is mainly for the readers and general public and not for the Whole sellers and distributors like the Frankfurt Book Fair. Its the world's Largest Non Trade Book Fair, Asia's largest Book Fair and third largest annual conglomeration of books after the Frankfurt Bookfair and the London Book Fair. Its also the bookfair with the most footfall averaging 2000000 people attending this fair.

This Book fair was used to be known as Calcutta Book Fair in English, and officially Antarjatik Kolkata Boimela or Antarjatik Kolkata Pustakmela is now known as the International Kolkata Book Fair.

Considered an inherent part of Kolkata and with some people attending the fare daily, has a typical fair ground experience with picnickers, Singers, songwriters, small art sellers, candy floss sellers etc and all these fair themes having a bookish flavor turns the Kolkata Book Fair into a fair unavailable elsewhere.

The fair used to be held for seven days earlier but on popular demand it has been extended to be a 12 affair instead of the regular 7 days. It starts on the last Wednesday of January and ends on the first or second Sunday of February . Its planned in such a way that it ensures that Kolkatans have their payday in between and tries to miss the Saraswati Puja ( Saraswati Puja is a Hindu Goddess of Learning and hence many Kolkatans worship Books on this day and do not touch Books for any other reasons)

A Stall set up by the Kolkata Police. It has several interesting pieces of exhibits like a machine gun that was surrendered to Mahatma Gandhi, a Lipstic Gun, Several old revolvers and pistols,The one item that draws the maximum crowd is the Car of Commissioner of Police Kolkata official car that was bought in the year 1956 at the cost of Rs.18000.00 for the then Commissioner Mr. Hari Sadhan Ghosh Chowdhury. Commissioners from then has been using this car some for their entire tenure , some for days and few for hours but all have used it atleast once. This is a Dodge model from Kingsway. Demonstrations on Bomb Disposal , Disaster management, Police sketch on criminals etc.

Stall of Jago Bangla ( A mouth Piece of The ruling party of West Bengal)

Stall setup for the Little magazines.

Keeping up with the flavour of the fare International Kolkata Book Fare also allows other artists and craftsmen to showcase and sell their wares apart from Books, the fair has several stalls and shops setup by the artists involved in making and marketing of art and crafts, Handicrafts. Like there are stalls of artists drawing portraits, Pictures , Micro art, Medinipur ' POT CHITRA' , Handicrafts items made on and of various items like beetle nut, Grass, Straw, Rajma (Kidney Bean), Glass, Paper mache

This is Micro art, art on extremely small piece of medium rike , Rice ,( As shown in the picture) , Lentil, Pin Head, matchstick tip etc.

A Chitokor from Medinipur folk-paintaing a T-Shirt

Potchitro of Medinipur. The unique style of art using leisurely strokes of bright colours to create stories with the painting. These paintings often depicts traditional mythological tales, tribal rituals,contemporary themes and s on. These paintings in elaborate form also has a song attached to it and are sung along with scrolling of the paintings as medium of narration.