The sage advice has always been to keep the best and discard the worst. But the Publishers and Booksellers Guild seems to have an overt reverence for the golden mean. What else explains its decision to keep a watered-down version of the bête noir of the Maidan, the food pavilion, on the seven-acre plot of the Salt Lake stadium that seems inadequate for the 600-odd stalls?

There are book-lovers who rue the Calcutta Book Fair’s exit from the Maidan. There are others who are happy that the city’s green has been saved, and much relieved to know that the carnival will not end. And there are those indifferent to books, but not the environment.

There is another lot — the middle class suburbanite, who cares little for books or the green, and yet frequents the boimela with the family in tow. Attracted to the Maidan all these years by the smell of fish fry and moglai porota, he has nevertheless consented to buy comics, ghost stories or some porar boi. Whatever may happen to the fair this year or to the question of its permanent venue, the organizers, evidently, have not forgotten him.

Any public event does call for refreshments. But is there need for the already-full Bengali stomach to be stuffed with food once more? The food pavilion used to take up a significant portion of the Maidan which could have been allotted to bookstalls instead. It is destined to occupy a sizeable portion of the area this time as well. Given the lay of the ground in the stadium, the garbage will accumulate right behind a row of stalls. Unless cleared daily, the heap will nauseate both book-lovers and food-lovers. As of last Saturday, the food dump of the recently concluded trade fair had not been removed.

Visitors to the book fair will use the four gates to the stadium. Security personnel will be re-deployed from the permanent security at the stadium to the fair. Jalal Hussein, one such security guard, is confident that his boys will manage on February 14, since those who come to watch the India-Myanmar football match will not use the stadium gates and ramps close to the fairground. But the decision to allow them to visit the book fair on the match ticket is certainly a recipe for disaster. The ground is too small to accommodate two sets of fair-hoppers. Besides, the hooligans among the football fans may cause law and order problems.

But the real scare at the new fairground is the ghost of 1997. The guild had not even sought the permission of the Bidhannagar civic authorities as of Monday. Fire engines are supposed to be close at hand and the guild is likely to enforce stricter restrictions within the fair premises . But the efforts may come to nought as the stalls would have very narrow lanes between them and a significant portion of the fair would be circumscribed by concrete walls. One dare not, therefore, imagine the consequences of a fire. The organizers plan to retain some of the bigger metal structures of the trade fair and partition them to accommodate multiple stalls under a common roof. The guild may consider retaining all of the metal structure since it is safer than the wooden frames of most stalls.

The guild and the government must think and act fast on a permanent and adequate site for the book fair. Calcutta cannot lose the book fair. Yet the fair cannot hold the environment to ransom by returning to the Maidan. This year, freedom of movement will be restricted and visitors may not have room enough to catch their breath between stalls. Unlike the Maidan, the dust raised will not find an easy exit from the closed space. And nobody seems quite sure of the parking space apart from the area around Subhas Sarobar. It would be ironic, after all the hue and cry, if the Calcutta Book Fair acquires the distinction of being the only fair expecting fewer footfalls than the previous year!