High Court decision leaves intellectuals dejected

Express news service

Posted online: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at 0137 hrs IST

Kolkata, January 28
The intelligentsia of the city has expressed shock and dismay over the Calcutta High Court’s order preventing the organisers to hold the annual book fair at the Park Circus Maidan.

“How can it happen to Kolkata? So many guests have already arrived and many are coming. I have got a few friends among them and I don’t know how I will show my face to them,” author Sunil Gangopadhyay said. He added the order should have been passed earlier. “That would have saved us from disgrace,’ he said.

Tomorrow, the author alongwith a few others, plan to visit the Milan Mela site to see if the fair can be held there.

Filmmaker Mrinal Sen also expressed unhappiness over the court’s ruling. “The book fair has become a part and parcel of Kolkata’s cultural life and canceling it is an affront on it. This fair was stopped on the ground of pollution. I want to ask — which place of Kolkata is free from pollution? The plea is ridiculous,” Sen said.

Novelist Shirshendu Mukopadhyay said, “I feel so frustrated and dejected. I do not know what to do. I blame the Guild for such a situation. They should have thought of an alternative site since it was sub-judice. What they did was quite childish.”