A Day When Knowledge Wore Yellow: Saraswati Puja at the International Kolkata Book Fair

🖊️ Anushka Das

On the second day of 49th International Kolkata Book Fair, the air felt different: slower, warmer and almost deliberate. Saraswati Puja had arrived and with that a subtle shift in how people moved through the fair . Pages were turned more patiently and conversations lingered longer .

 

Yellow and white flowed through the lanes like a shared language. Couples walked shoulder to shoulder , pausing to click pictures of each other , smiling without hurry. Friends gathered in clusters ,laughter spilling between the stalls, while others navigated the fair’s map with intent tracing routes like small pilgrimages.It was Bengal's quiet Valentine's day, where love didn't demand spectacle but presence and patience.

Books on this day felt less like commodities and more like offerings. One reader stood browsing with a Franz Kafka novel tucked under his arm, amused when asked if he’s a bookworm . He hadn't come with a list or a plan. On Saraswati Puja he felt the only way to spend the day, was here among shelves of stories, letting a book choose him than the other way around.

 

For those behind the stalls, the coincidence of Saraswati Puja and the second day of fair carried its own excitement. After years of witnessing the fair's rhythms, this alignment still felt special - amplified by the promise of a long weekend and the steady stream of visitors who arrived not just to buy, but to belong.

Small moments stitched the entire day together. A little girl dressed entirely in yellow, stood near a book stall , momentarily still like a living echo of the goddess herself . A mother and daughter stepped out of a stall, clutching her new book with visible pride. A young boy leafed through a comic, eyes wide, oblivious to the crowd around him.

 

Love revealed itself in softer ways. An elderly couple paused to take a photograph, book bags resting between them like the proof of the day spent together. There was no rush, only the ease of a shared ritual of returning side by side to something familiar.

The Book Fair had been anticipated . On Saraswati Puja it was fulfilled. Knowledge was not merely celebrated, it was carried home, held close and remembered.