Editorial

Of Book covers, Beholders and Barista

Book covers are almost equal to stunning discoveries. They smell not of cologne-dewy sixpocket dawns in the city, but of tapestry, the Kashmiri or the Turkish designs intricately woven with love by the carpet sellers here, there or nowhere! Discoveries for the beholders babbling across the brick-laden Sunday morns of Barista. Whether it is the not-so-foppish straight-from-the-train, flabbergasted youth from Howrah station, or the tornado-like lady with a whirring fan above her head, peering through the membranous afternoon tracks of the Kolkata metro, I find them all to be beholders.

Beholders taking refuge under harmonium reeds that again sing the tunes of book covers. Bold, fidgety embossed fonts in scarlet, crisscrossed with a semi-golden lash, ochre-yellow or white pages flurrying with an inimitable jest across College Street, Park Street, Esplanade, Kankurgachhi, or Tollygunge. As the delightful mornings walk a little, tumble and take recourse to a supine afternoon in the lichened sorceries of Prinsep Ghat, I try to peep in more; the glazed book covers, the matte-finished or the half-torn ones soaking into the breathless binaries of love stories from some ancient pixellated ages! Syrupy Sunday threads on book covers, with finicky illustrations, or unpacking the vastness of the oceanic formulae, this is what remains now, in gleam, in opacity, in the naïve winter strains! The book covers on racks, folded corner tables, shelves heading toward eternity or the covers that move about surreptitiously through the avenue of my brown eyes!
This week also, in Sunday Talks, we celebrate reading, writing, books, stories, poems and artworks! Send in your creative flights of imagination to Sreetanwi at sreesup@gmail.com or techtouchtalk@gmail.com
Love, like, comment, share: www.techtouchtalk.in

Sreetanwi Chakraborty