The College Street book market. A Telegraph picture

Despite the bandh that brought the city to a halt on Wednesday, several scholars, teachers and students trickled into The Oberoi Grand to observe the unveiling of a bid document and the screening of a short film that might fetch Calcutta Unesco’s World City of Literature title.

The launch was preceded by a panel discussion chaired by Roy Cross, the director of British Council, Scotland, and trustee of Edinburgh World City of Literature Trust. Eleanor O’Keeffe from the Jaipur Literary Festival, Amit Jha, the director of Patna Book Fair and Tridib Chatterjee of Calcutta Book Fair spoke about organising literary festivals.

A 15-minute film, commissioned by the British Council and made by the young duo of Soumyak Kanti De Biswas and Tanaji Dasgupta of Tin Can Films, was screened next.

“Presenting Calcutta as a city of literature was a difficult task. We unearthed a billion writers and places in the city that could be spoken about, so we decided to treat it like an ad instead of a documentary. Not just record the literary aspects but also the buzz around the city,” said 22-year-old Soumyak.

With a voiceover by Aparna Sen and music by Neel Dutt, the visuals scour the lanes and bylanes of Baithakkhana Road in north Calcutta and capture the book-binding process before moving on to a montage of people thronging Oxford Bookstore, New Market, the city malls, Gariahat, College Street, Kumartuli and the boatmen on the Ganges. Numbers flash on their heads to indicate the collection of books each one has. Snippets of an adda session at the Coffee House and views of the second-hand book-stalls on the college campus help spin a tale around the city.

After the screening of the film, writers Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Nabarun Bhattacharya and Bani Basu unveiled the bid document and shared their experience of visiting the Edinburgh Book Festival last year. Edinburgh was the first city to be labelled the World City of Literature in 2004. Drafted by Professor Swapan Chakravorty of Jadavpur University with help from scholars in Calcutta and Edinburgh, the proposal will be forwarded to Paris by the year-end. If the bid is successful, the title will have Calcutta sharing its literary activities on a global platform.

Rimi B. Chatterjee (sitting on the ground) at the launch of her book. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

A “book launch” does not simply end with releasing yet another story into the world. Along with the book, the emotions that went into its making, the intangible forces that filled out the author’s toiling spirit, also make their way into the readers’ imagination.

It was precisely for this reason that the release of Rimi B. Chatterjee’s second novel, The City of Love, in mid-January, touched the assembled crowd deeply. Organised by Worldview Books at their Jadavpur University shop, the evening brought together students and academics, among others. Author Amitav Ghosh was also present.

The book was released and introduced by Amlan Dasgupta, professor of English at the university. Dasgupta feels that Chatterjee (who also teaches at the department) offers us something more complex than a historical novel. The City of Love, which is set in the turbulent 16th Century and spans across Europe to Bengal, “tells us about ourselves”. In it, history is entangled with destiny: trade, commerce and intrigues along the silk route are tied to Vaishnavism in Bengal, the cult of Tantra and other esoteric, indigenous traditions. With her characters — the Italian merchant, Fernando Almenara, Pir Baba, the vagrant mystic, Bajja, the tribal girl, and Chandu, the Shaiva priest’s son — Chatterjee puts a human face on this labyrinthine history. The vast repository of Indian Ocean scholarship that has gone into the writing is transformed by the author’s urge to tell a human story — of love, music and passion.

Since music is one of the themes that holds the novel together, Dasgupta chose to play a haunting extract from a Sufi composition sung by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. More music came from veteran singer Moushumi Bhowmick, who presented songs ascribed to Chandidas, Lalan and the bauls with great feeling and perfection. She was accompanied by Satyaki, who sang a couple of soulful melodies himself. The final musical offering was from Sourav Mondal, who gave an accomplished performance.

(Contributed by Mohua Das and Somak Ghoshal)