The Quiet Grammar of Staying Young

🖊️Anushka Das

In the quiet slipstream of January 30th, the Book Fair appeared to rush past itself . The younger crowd moved with practiced urgency towards food stalls, photographs and destinations already decided. Yet beneath this velocity ran another current, slower and steadier, one that required a deliberate unlearning of speed to notice.

On Martyr's Day, the Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya stall had an air heavy with silence, that feels almost defiant against the surrounding digital hum. It stood as a minimalist sanctuary , books written by Gandhi and books written on him, arranged in Bengali and English , their spines upright and patient. A charkha , stood near the entrance it's stillness almost deliberate, as if waiting for  hands that remembered it's rhythm. The stallholders admit the crowds have dwindled, but for the solitary seeker asking for the "best collections" of the Mahatma, the stall remains the fair’s moral compass. He left without haste, carrying a face rather than a text.

 

Just beyond this stillness, the “Chiro Tarun” spirit breathes life into the dusty fairgrounds. These veterans , the true backbone of the fair since it's 1976 inception, navigate the 2026 landscape with a mix of gritty nostalgia and graceful adaptation. One gentleman clutching a cane scoffs at the “lies” of the digital world insisting that without books, “we are nothing”. To him the transition from Maidan’s grit to Karunamoyee’s organized aisles is a welcome evolution yet he mourns a shift in culture, where the fair was once a pilgrimage for the printed word , he now sees a crowd that treats the venue as a status symbol, where the focus on eating often competes the hunger for literature.

They spoke of earlier fair, where coming only meant one thing : buying books . Of dusty grounds and wider spaces. Of waiting for Sukhtara, devouring Teni Da in one breath and returning stories to classrooms as if knowledge demanded circulation.

 

 They acknowledge change without hostility, admitting while their eyes sees the world through a vintage lens, change is the only constant. Metro routes ease distances, digital maps brought the book fair into their palms. Nearby an older couple, searches for Bengali stories, hoping their English- medium granddaughter might find a connection to her mother tongue through a gift from her grandparents.

 

“Are we still young?” an elderly woman joked, when told it was Chiro Tarun Dibas. But the answer lay in their presence. Youth here was not biological, it was archival. As long as books mattered , as long as stories were carried forward: sometimes by cane , sometimes by memory - the fair remained young.

 

On a day of martyrdom and remembrance the Book Fair found its continuity in these quiet custodians. Between an empty Gandhi stall and hands reaching for books, the grammar of staying young continued to write itself slowly, steadfastly and against the current.