People stand against the bookstore after the College Street area gets waterlogged for collisions, in Calcutta, Tuesday 23 September 2025. Photo Credit: PTI
Publishers and booksellers on College Street, often considered the world’s largest book market, are still recovering from shock when they saw their goods immersed in the water, no longer, after heavy rains in the early morning of 23 September.
The loss is now diving even more, because normal life continues after the holidays of Durga Puja – which began almost immediately after massive floods – most of their employees returned to work and the shops looked back to the detriment.
The Tridib Chatterjee of Publishers & Booksellers Guild gave a total loss that businesses, small and large, in the area of approximately 2 Crore 2, including not only tied books, but also paper, cover jackets, hardboards for links and other articles needed for bookmaing. “Our total loss for which we claimed is around 9 ₹ Lakh,” Mr. Chatterjee said about his own publishing house Patra Bharati.
Subhankar Dey of Dey’s Publishing, one of the largest and most renowned Bengal publishers, said his company lost approximately 8 to 9 laches of books in the floods, but that failure, more than financial, was emotional.
“Fire and water – are like Mahishasura (Demon God) for Books. I have never seen so much water. We had floods in 1978, but I have no memories because I was too small. Then I was a cyclone amphan that was a storm rather than water.
For many publishers, especially smaller ones, the pain of Durg Puja, which they have just printed, was more painful. “We lost over 1,000 books. When I came to the store around 11 pm this morning, I went to shock. The damage was caused and there was nothing to do with it,” said Sukanya Mondal, Director of Deep Prakashan, and I estimated Skoda 3 Lakh.
Dasgupta And Co., the oldest existing bookstore Kolkata, caused total damage to its massive £ 40 lakh store, including loss of more than 2,000 books.
“We visited the shop to find 52 of our shelves under water. Since rare books to computer documents, everything was damaged or lost. Whatever was damaged, it was out of redemption,” said Abinda Dasgupt, Iconic Trade CEO.
He later wrote on the social media: “No government official visited Boipar (Book Neighborhood, that is College Street).
The well -known writer Amar Mitra called on the state government to improve the drainage system in this area and also to provide some relief, especially to younger publishers. “I was told that young writers received funds and gathered around RS 5.5 lakh and distributed them among new publishers,” he said.
Gaurav Adhikari, associated with the publishing company, said that many readers have expressed support on social media and offered to buy damaged books at discounted prices. “It is often said to us that Bengal readers are moving to English, but that is clearly not true if you look at support,” Mr. Adhikari said.
Santana Ghosh, a partner of Book Farm, said his publication company lost books worth Rs. 1 Lakh, a large figure for a small publisher. “Nothing can be worse than looking at the bookstores that are immersed in the water. Even seniors in business said they had never seen anything like that,” he said.
Published – October 15 2025 10:52
