BBC School report :2nd Milestone

International Literary Boundaries Broken At Milan Mela, Kolkata, India

From Charles Dickens to Chetan Bhagat, from Valerio Massimo Manfredi to Vikram Seth, literature converged at Milan Mela from 26-31st January 2012. The Calcutta Literary Meet was held by the British Councli to celebrate the bicentenary of the 19th century writer, Charles Dickens.
The event was inaugrated by novelist, poet, librettist, translator and humourist Vikram Seth and author Sunil Gangopadhay.Side by side, the Annual Kolkata Book Fair also commenced on 25th January, 2012, with Italy being the theme this time. To commemorate the theme, a model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa was built and a special stall was set up which contained books by Italian authors put on display.
The British Council invited contemporary writers all across India to this event like Chetan Bhagat, Amish, Shirshendu Mukhopadhay and Vikram Seth. Archaeologist, professor at Luigi University at Milan and writer Valerio Massimo Manfredi's visit to India saw him speaking on how literature gets strengthened by history.
Besides the famous authors, the umpteen number of books also grabbed the attention of the masses. It has almost become a tradition for more or less the entire population of Kolkata to visit the annual Book Fair in the twelve days it is held. The tremendous crowd did not deter the visitors from buying their favourite books, or even checking out their favourite stalls. The children flocked to the Dante and Mark Twain pavilions.
We had our students from DPS Newtown attending the Reading Room session. They were Sushmit of Class-VII and Nilabro of Class-VI. Sushmit said, "I liked the stalls put up by British Council and Oxford. We had Scarlett Cook from the British Council reading a chapter from Oliver Twist." Nilabro said that Vikram Seth came to introduce his new book, 'The Rivered Earth'. They liked the fact that the Meet was advanced and better administered.
Most of the cities were not left behind in this attempt, be it Jaipur or Hyderabad ,as in the words of Jai Arun Singh, writer and blogger, "It gets a bit tiring. Almost every city and town wants to have a literary festival of its own."
Despite being only two days apart, The Jaipur Literary Festival and The Calcutta Literary Meet were on completely different idealogies. The Jaipur Literary Festival was based on authors and literary figures while The Calcutta Literary Meet was more on books and publications. For Calcutta, it was a significant first.

COMPILED BY:- BBC School Correspondants from DPS Newtown, Kolkata-Sayanti, Semanti, Anmol.