“Let your silence make a sound
All that’s lost can
still be found
You’re too good for giving up”
~Liam Gallagher, Too Good for Giving Up
There are a lot of things I believe. I believe in a thing called love, I believe in beauty. But sometimes, I need make believe to make me believe things. I guess that’s why I cannot stop myself from buying books like a maniac. There’s just something about a book, there’s just something about people who decided to put a pen to a piece of paper and sometimes those people, living or dead, can actually bring others together.
This is the story of a bookstore and a young bunch of people who like books. At least that’s where it begins. Where it goes from there is a lot of talking, a few connections and a queer little push that seemed to come from somewhere inside me- Give these guys a chance. I’m glad I did.
This book club came into my life when I least expected it to. As I was feeling my way around, there were many people who spoke to me about a few things. Their admins, Khushi and Shreemanti asked me to drop by an online meeting and see what happens, and that’s how my journey started.
Over the course of the last month, (and I’m realizing this now), as I mourned the loss of my father, Khushi’s club called Kolkata Bookworms suddenly stepped in to fill a part of a very large void. If nothing else, it was a place where I could pop in and talk books. A few people reached out and asked me about things like Amazon Customer Care numbers or a suggestion for an entry into science fiction. I kept sharing books I got in April (and I got a LOT of books in April).
I feel like the biggest bonding exercise we did as a club was when we did the NaPoWriMo together and that was when I found there are writers here as well. Some of those poems were fun to engage with, to ponder on and I’m pretty sure one or two of them will at a later date be dug up and read again.
And then, we met! Our (at the time member, currently Pooh Bear and for me personally someone I can legit want to be like when I grow old) very own Pooji came down from Jaipur and there was a lunch!
The café we chose was one that I had walked past for years, but never bothered to go in to. It was a bright café called Grezia, done up in blue and white. It being Star Wars Day, I was obviously dressed in a Star Wars shirt and I was a little nervous if the truth be told. For all my bravado and excellent communication skills, I am now learning a little about the importance of boundaries, not just my own, but of the ones others set. But it was a sunny day, a cheerful café, John Mayer (serendipitously) had just finished singing and well, I thought “Let’s do this”.
People started to trickle in bit by bit. This is where it starts to free fall. From this point on, please do not ask me to explain time. Ask me about the conversations, I can back you up, but there were a lot of those. But as is critical in a conversation, some stayed silent, some spoke. I made mistakes, I laughed because the others laughed them off with me, and I spoke to someone about the Bible and actually understood a lot about the difference between Miltonian and Biblical Lucifer. I even feel a pull to visit a church I’ve walked past many a time. I got called out for bad mouthing Durjoy Dutta and since there have been a lot of endings in my life; I managed to pass on Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending to someone yesterday.
I don’t know at what point pizza arrived. I do remember telling someone to put chili flakes and oregano in coke and getting a weird look, but weird as it sounds, it rocks. At some point we ended up discussing what food we would like to eat until we die and the common factor may have been biriyani, but dal bati churma, dal makhni, kadhi chawal and a little healthy dose of the good old truth fit the bill as well.
While I do not remember every conversation at that table, I remember Cuddles on the Beach, randomly swapping my mixed fresh lime soda with something called Chilli Gondhoraj, a pun about how a fly determines if you are sweet or not, and wondering at the end of the day exactly when one guy happened to take 49 photos.
I have been to that locality so many times, but these people have made me realize that I will never look at that locality with the same eyes. Was it the Joey vs Chandler with a side of French Vanilla, or was it when I glanced at my watch, saw that it was 6:30PM and wondered out loud “Where has the time gone?”
I suppose life is going to go on whether I like it or not, and I suppose Brandon Sanderson (splendid little bugger) has a point when he wrote in The Stormlight Archive
“This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. I promise you Kaladin: You will be warm again”.
It’s really good to be here, Kolkata Bookworms. Thank you for having me! If this is what an unofficial meet is like, I cannot wait to find out what official ones are like.
Ashesh Mitra
A Weird Guy Who Reads a Lot