The International Kolkata Book Fair is less than a week away — to be inaugurated on January 31 — and labourers are toiling away erecting stalls at Central Park.

Work had begun days after Bidhannagar Mela (Utsav) ended on January 3 but was on hold for a couple of days last week as thousands of Trinamul Congress supporters camped there before the rally at Brigade Parade Ground last Saturday.

“There were 35,000 supporters, mainly from north Bengal, who stayed for two nights at the Central Park fairgrounds. Since the I-League and ISL are on now, we could not put them up at the stadium as in other years,” said minister and local MLA Sujit Bose.

Still, the book fair organisers say they have worked their way around the hurdle and are putting their best foot forward for one of the most awaited events of the year.

“We were handed over the ground after the Bidhannagar Mela (Utsav) got over on January 3 but when we were told at the time that they would use the ground for housing their rally supporters we were badly shaken. But I must admit that the ground reality is not as bad as we had feared. Last year, we got five days to put up the stalls (after the eviction of encroachers in the adjacent plot). This time we are getting a clear seven days. There are 16 decorators working for the guild and many more for individual publishers. We should be able to hand over the stalls to publishers by January 27,” said Tridib Chatterjee, general secretary of the Publishers and Booksellers Guild, the organisers of the fair.

Work, interrupted

Central Park fairgrounds resembles a battlefield this week. Labourers are hammering and sawing away to glory and you have to watch your step lest you step on loose nails or trip over stacked bamboo sticks.

But while most of the ground seems to be lying flat, all eyes turn to these big and beautiful tents standing in their midst. “These are the tents the Trinamul supporters were living in,” said Bappa Ray, a manager working on behalf of a decorator at the fair. “Thousands of men were living here between January 17 and 19. In fact, it was us who built them those tents.”

Ray says the tents weren’t extra work for them. “We would be erecting these tents for the fair anyway, perhaps later. The fair committee simply asked us to build them sooner. That way the Trinamul supporters would be living there first and book stalls would be housed there later.”

The tents are of various sizes. The largest one, that on Tuesday still bore a sign “Tent 37”, would be around 200ft x 50ft, by Ray’s estimate. The tents have metallic frames but the walls and doors are made of a thick synthetic fabric. They have plywood floors, are carpeted and will be air-conditioned soon.

On Tuesday, a huge shed in the ground still announced itself as “khabarer jayga” (space for food) and the dustbins next to it held some leftover rice and thermocol plates used by the party supporters. “They had made hundreds of temporary toilets, which have now been dismantled,” said one of the sweepers at the ground. “Considering the tens of thousands gathered, they left the place cleaner than we had expected.”

On Tuesday, staff members of SK Star Decorators had brought in ACs. “The tents will need lots of ACs. We have got 58 7.5 tonnes ACs today,” said a staff, Sandip Kumar. “We start work from today and since the tents are ready, we can wrap up in a few days. Our work has not got delayed due to the political supporters staying here.”

Employees of PK Creations, another decorator agency, said they had not lost time as they had been informed of the break in advance. “We have worked in far tighter schedules at the book fair,” he continued. “A few years ago at the Milan Mela venue a chunk of shops booked space in the last minute. We worked night and day to erect their stalls in time. This year a few day’s gap does not matter as we are working from January 8.”

Kamal Chakraborty of Camp Publications had come scouting the locations on Tuesday. “We have booked 100sq ft space in the little magazine corner and I’ve come early today to grab a plot with good visibility. Once the labourers get to work it will not take much time to set the stall,” he said.

Debasis Lahiri, a staff member of the guild, said they need just 10 full days of work to get the show on the road. “Last year there were teething problems as the venue was new for book sellers and buyers alike but this year things will be easier. We have been working on the ground since January 7 so a shutdown between January 17 and 19 made no difference. We are working on full swing now.”

One irritant that the guild has requested the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation to deal with is the stench of human waste emanating from around the Central Park waterbody. “There were covered toilets built for them in the fairground but the village people possibly preferred to just cross the low boundary wall and use the bank of the pond. The stench is unbearable that side. We have requested the mayor to take action,” said Chatterjee, who visited the ground on Tuesday.

January 22, 2019: Preparation under way at the fairground with the same tents set to house book fair stalls. Brinda Sarkar

Trinamul Congress supporters in town to attend last Saturday’s rally at the Brigade Parade ground have lunch on the fairgrounds on Friday. The Telegraph picture