Calcutta: Rabindranath Tagore's Sahoj Path is getting introduced to beginners through a language and a script they are familiar with. Just that the language and the script are not the same.

"We have a defined clientele - those who can speak Bengali but cannot read the language. Printing Bengali texts in Roman script gives them a chance to read Bengali books," says Indrani Roy of Mitra & Ghosh.

So far the publishers have brought out six titles. Besides Sahoj Path, there is Jogindranath Sarkar's Hasi Khusi and Sukumar Roy's Abol Tabol. There are also colouring books on the same.

At the Book Fair, the Benglish Books (the name of the series) figured in the top three on the publisher's sales chart.

Encouraged by the response, they are planning to publish more titles. But they are wary of revealing the names for fear of a repeat of the backlash on social media they have faced.

"Some people are failing to understand that the texts are still in Bengali even if they are printed in Roman script. The fact that a generation of Bengalis is growing up unaware of our children's classics does not bother them," laments Roy.

If a reader is interested to learn the Bengali script, he can do so from the letters printed in some of their titles, she point out.

The idea is not as novel as one might think. Poet Sankha Ghosh, who considers the trend to be an "unfortunate indication of the dipping graph of readership in Bengali", points to a suggestion by linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji in the 1930s that Bengali be written in Roman script to avoid spelling differentiations and reach a pan-Indian audience.

The first instance of a long Bengali text printed in Roman was a collection of Aesop's Fables called Oriental Fabulist, published in six Indian languages in 1803.

Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay's Durgeshnandini was printed in Roman in 1881, says Indologist Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri, who owns a copy.

"We are used to sending Bengali text messages in Roman. Reading these books is a natural extension of that practice," says Sudip Mallik of Phoenix Advertising, who conceived of the project.