A barter of books
A sea of books remained on the ground, from young-adult fiction to short stories, under the shade of tall trees at the capital's Rabindra Sarobar, welcoming an equally large sea of avid readers.
The scenario might remind one of Amar Ekushey book fair. However, on this occasion, to get new books money would not cut it. Only by giving away books from one's personal collection could they get books from the huge collection in front of them.
Boi Bondhu, a group that strives to promote reading, yesterday organised the book-exchange festival "Boi Bondhu'r Sathe Boi Binimoy Utshab".
The rules were simple: donate books and take an equal number of them from the collection. There were three counters for donation, and after donating, each person received a receipt, mentioning the number of books given away. The donor could then choose the books of their choice, after showing the receipt.
Arifur Rahman, a student of Sher-e-Bangla Medical College, donated nine books and had so far taken Deyal by Humayun Ahmed and Kiriti Samagra by Nihar Ranjan Gupta. He was focused on choosing more books.
"This experience is unique. I've never exchanged books before anywhere. This saves money for students, and at the same time, helps in getting new books," he said.
Sadia Akhter, a 10th-grader at YWCA School in Dhaka, came with her friend Nushaira-un-Noor, after coming across the event on Facebook.
Sadia donated four books and collected two: Ami Topu and Niyan, both written by Muhammed Zafar Iqbal, and Joutho Ekakitto by Manju Sarkar.
"We've been here since 12pm and now it's 3pm. We're still trying to find books of our choice. Many students like us are coming here. It feels great to see the festivity and gathering," said an elated Sadia.
The daylong event started at 10am and was scheduled to continue till 6pm. Although there were 70 volunteers, they had trouble dealing with the big crowd, which mostly comprised of students.
"We never expected such a crowd. From morning till afternoon, the people were moving like bees. We are, of course, happy to see the students," said volunteer Sahadat Hossain Shourav, a private university student.
Boi Bondhu is brainchild of Mohiuddin Toha, who started the initiative on his own by transforming a bus into library in 2018. So far, they have installed 56 libraries, he said.
"Our team has set up libraries at many places for free. We've never arranged a book-exchange event before…We aimed to exchange 1,000 books, but within the afternoon, we'd crossed 5,000," Toha said.
Comments