Feature

Of Old Bookstalls & Kiosks

Rafiqul Islam Rime

There are certain places that you feel like visiting time and again. They can be anywhere a posh market place, a movie complex, a theatre or the zoo. However, I propose to talk about the old-book kiosks or markets scattered around the city that you and you're friends continue to visit year after year, no matter how difficult it has become to move across the crevices of the city. You stroll around the stalls, leaf through books or magazines and finally leave with some books in your hand. You seem rejuvenated and your spirit is uplifted. These places have special characteristics which only regular visitors can take pleasure in.

However, I will only discuss the old bookstalls in Chittagong, leaving aside the huge canvas of Dhaka 's Neel-Khet and other such places.

When I was in class six at Chittagong Collegiate School, I happened to locate the library at the centre of the city. Our PL (Public Library) was at a unique multi-storied building opposite to the central Shaheed Minar and beside the Muslim Hall. It is a unique complex with national grandeurs! It was here where I relished a variety of books, covering Aesop's fables and RakkoshKhokkosh (The Devils) and classic writers like Krishan Chandra to Sadat Hasan Manto among others.
Here in Chittagong, we do not have as many markets like in Dhaka. We have some scattered around the city, and a noteworthy one is "Omor Boi Ghor," at Reazuddin Bazar Road. It was a modest sized room with books swarming all around, on the first floor of the market. Readers were mostly school and varsity students. The infinite variety of books was what the defining factor for the readers, as the bookworms could browse through unlimited genres like the classics, Bengali and English, hardcore math books, essay books and books on the space shuttle in Columbia!

There were some other old book stalls in areas like Chawk Bazar, Andar Killa, Lal Dighi etc. However, these places were largely meant magazines. But, the fact remains that you never can tell when and how you may find the book that your mind had been longing for as I did when I came across my most favourite novel, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, on a slumbering afternoon in the year 1980 after years of looking!

The practical point about these book stalls is that you can buy or hire books at a nominal price.

Though these places are old, you will nevertheless, find newness wrapped in the old clothes of your consciousness! It is like going back in time with "present" in mind! Visiting these kinds of places brings the freshness of your mind and urge you to seek new knowledge.