A Quiet Portal to the Past at IKBF 2026

🖊️Kathakali De

At the 49th International Kolkata Bookfair, amidst the vibrant literary symphony and bustles lies a quiet corner that opens a gateway into another century.

 

 Tucked away amid busy stalls, this section contains books that carry anecdotes of the past, endured a century—paper that has turned to the color of tea, bindings that have softened with time, and margins that hint of past readers.

 

These chronicles are not mere objects, they are living repertoires and archives. Alongside brittle newspapers, hand-printed poetry volumes, and atlases from the colonial era are first editions of Bengali masterpieces. The mood created by the dusty, warm, and distinct fragrance of ancient paper contrasts sharply with the shiny covers found elsewhere in the fair.

 

Here, booksellers are both storytellers and historians. Many have replaced fragile spines, repaired bindings, and meticulously saved ripped pages. They take great satisfaction in discussing the book's provenance, including who possessed it, where it traveled, and how it reappeared decades later. Personal inscriptions, pressed flowers, or penciled additions mapping private histories onto public texts can still be found in some volumes.

The booth serves as a tactile lesson on material history for younger readers. Startled by the paper's weight and the grace of vintage font, they turn pages slowly. For older guests, it's an experience with memory—school textbooks, long-lost novels, or magazines they used to read as kids.

 

In addition to selling books, the vintage section at IKBF 2026 curates time. It reminds the busy fairgoers that literature has a real history that can be felt, smelled, and held. These 100-year-old books show how stories, like paper, can endure long after they are first printed and act as a bridge between business and culture, connecting readers from the past to the present. By keeping quiet, they anchor the fair to history and preserve Kolkata's literary pulse for future generations and eras.