Inside Earthcare in Middleton Street. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Amidst a garage, a vegetarian diner, a car rental and sundry other shops sits Earthcare, formerly known as Classic Books. It has been there for 20 years, at a fashionable address in Middleton Street. Yet few are aware of its existence.

But those who are, drop in quite frequently. It’s a haunt for the fit few who look for the odd title and would like it if they could pick it up without burning a hole in the pocket. A place where one gets copies of Mark Twain or Nietschze for as much as Rs 75. A place that sells Aldous Huxley along with Arundhati Roy, William Dalrymple with Urvashi Bhutalia, Partha Chatterjee with Joseph Stiglitz.

It’s a nice web of fiction, academic tomes, children’s writings and graphic novels, coffee table books along with propaganda literature. Earthcare is a quintessential “alternative bookstore”. But owner proprietor Vinita Mansata, a rather quiet and unassuming lady with flowing grey locks, shudders at the label.

Classic Books was born in December 1985. “It was nurtured as a place where new ideas emerged, people interacted, and critical thinking encouraged,” says Vinita. But she left for Mumbai soon after, leaving friends to supervise the store.

One of them was a long-haired young gentleman, silent and tanned, who added to the quaint charm of the store for years. “It was while I was in Mumbai that I became involved with environment and ecology. My son was born and I was concerned about the environment that he’d inherit,” says Vinita.

She and her husband bought a piece of land in Vara near Mumbai where they practised reforestation and organic farming. “I came back to Calcutta in 2000 and found the place run down. I decided to start it afresh and make environment and sustainable development its focus.”

Renamed Earthcare, the store today has Vandana Shivas and Amita Baviskars, Mahesh Rangarajans and Ramachandra Guhas prominently displayed. One also finds copies of Addicted to War: Why the US Can’t Kick Militarism, an “illustrated expose” by Joel Andreas that perhaps indicates the political stands of the inmates.

Vinita has also started a small publishing list. “Instead of being just distributors, I decided to publish books on the subject closest to my heart.” A very adventurous enterprise in a city that might boast of book-lovers all right but not much of book buyers, as sales figures testify.

“I have done about 20 books,” says Vinita, starting off with Tending the Earth: Traditional, Sustainable Agriculture, a monograph by Winin Pereira.“I printed 2,000 copies in 1994 and have finally exhausted the title now. Perhaps, we’ll go for reprint soon,” says Vinita.

There are others that followed: Global Parasites: 500 years of Western Culture jointly written by Pereira and Jeremy Seabrook, The River and Life: People’s Struggle in the Narmada Valley by Sanjay Sangvai.

Vinita’s concern for alternative farming finds expression in Sriniketan by Sandip Bandopadhyay, a treatise on Tagore’s quest for the ideal farming.