Any year that begins with the sight of young people lost in the pages they hold open in front of them, in a public place with others of their clan similarly engrossed, can't be bad.Then things started to happen in fits and starts. The gorgeous Baatighar opened in Chittagong which was a significant development in a city where I had not noticed any bookstores of note before. The first thing you note when you walk into that store is the atmosphere. There's a kind of stillness in there that just lends itself to reading. And it dawns on you how young the clientele is. You look upon the astonishing sight of young people sitting on the floor or on stools or leaning against walls, reading. An attendant told me they sold one lac taka's worth of books per day. Even if you take that with a pinch of salt, Baatighar's achievement in creating readers in Chittagong is singular. And the trickle started to approach something like a minor flood in 2017. The bookstore Charcha opened in Mohammadpur – again , I have not been out there but have heard good things about it. Book sharing sites started to appear. And Razia Rahman Jolly, wife of Faisal Arefin Dipan, the publisher and proprietor of Jagrity Prokashoni, who was so tragically and brutally murdered in October 2015, paid tribute to her late husband's memory in the most fitting way possible: By opening Dipanpur, the beautiful bookstore and gathering place for literature lovers, in Elephant Road. Towards the end of the year, the dazzling Bengal Boi opened in a three-story building in Dhanmondi with the top floor dedicated to children's books and different food offerings on each of its floors. If the selection there still doesn't match up to that of, say, Pathak Shamabesh, the sheer amount of space they have gives this establishment the potential to be the best bookstore in the land. And again, if you walk in there, any fears you may have that millenials are not readers will be assuaged. The few times I have gone, young people were lodged at every available crevice of the place with a book in hand. To usher in the New Year, we now have a sparkling new branch of Baatighar in Dhaka at the Bishwa Shahitya Kendra centre. Complete with an ornate (if somewhat over-the-top) Mughal motif, the place boasts a spacious floor chock-full of Bangla and English books of every description, places for browsers to sit and sift through items, and a lovely balcony that was shining with wintry sunshine of molten gold the one time I visited there. Even at the office building where I work, there is good news to be had: The Bookworm is opening a new branch, sharing their premise with North End Coffee Roasters, who offers surely your best caffeine fixes in town. This Bookworm outlet is going to be far larger than their original store, and the proprietors have always been a very responsive bunch to their patrons' needs. And in the basement of the same building, there is a cafe called the Nerdy Bean, complete with a fake fireplace, quaint table lamps, a red chandelier and several shelves filled with an assortment of books, with plans to double as a lending library. My cup runneth over. I have a good feeling about 2018. Any year that begins with the sight of young people lost in the pages they hold open in front of them, in a public place with others of their clan similarly engrossed, can't be bad.
Tanvir Haider Chaudhury spent most of his career as a banker and is now running a food and beverage company. He is unabashedly opinionated and avowedly Bengali.
