Ekushey Book Fair becomes vibrant on first weekend

Young boys and girls were covering maximum of number of the people roaming around the Suhrawardy Udyan and Bangla Academy premises, where the stalls are erected for the fair. The visitors expressed their satisfaction with the decoration on the fairground coupled with tight security measures. Publishers and stall owners too looked happy to see such a huge crowd, thus, posting a sharp rise in sales. “As it is a weekend today, we registered a massive turnout especially embodying a large number of youths at the fairground since morning.  The sale of books was satisfactory today compared to the first two days,” said SM Shahriar Mahmud, programme officer of Kotha Prokash. However, many recalling the murder of an author Avijit Roy in 2015 in the fair said they do not want such event to repeat not only in the venue, but also elsewhere in the country. A representative of Anannya Publisher also voiced the same claiming to have been getting a whale of response from the visitors and buyers. With the intensified security measures taken by law enforcing agencies, the people participating in the fair and those who were thronging it looked more relaxed despite the 2015 murder on the fairground, he added. People, be participants or visitors, are now confident enough to resist such incident, he further said. Farhana Jasmine, a visitor, said “The book fair appears every year with new hopes and thoughts, not to get any life of an intellectual or general people snuffed out.” “We do not want to see any such heinous incident to occur in the fair which we consider a festival and part of Bangla heritage,” she observed. Visitor and publishers suggested some developments of the fairground and cleanliness of the roads and walkways on it, so that walking across the fair premises becomes much easier as those held across the world. On the 3rd day, the fair saw the arrivals of 130 new books with fourteen being launched on the Bangla Academy premises. Book fair is open between 3pm and 8:30pm every day and from 11am to 8:30pm on holidays.