Posted on: 24 October 2010

Old books going places
By Soumitra Das - The Telegraph, Calcutta

Long before the Internet was even thought of and people depended entirely on snail mail, books provided a natural link with thinkers and readers the world over. So I should not have been as surprised as I was when I received an email from David Nelson, the man behind the famous website of photographs of Calcutta taken by Clyde Waddell in 1945 uploaded by the South Asia Section of the Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania, who requested me to trace a book dealer named R. Bhattacharya of Mahesh Mukherjee Feeder Road in Ariadaha in north Calcutta. The phone number did not work but a colleague, who is an Ariadaha resident, discovered that the man had sold off his house and shifted to Sodepur, further north.

Read the full article :
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1101024/jsp/calcutta/story_13093533.jsp


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Read the full article : http://www.telegraphindia.com/1101024/jsp/calcutta/story_13093533.jsp

Thanks to Julian Craig for sending this article.

An eye open for me especially, quote: "When he was weaned on this trade and even later, he had to produce catalogues and mail these to universities whose addresses were available then in a listings book titled The World Learning priced at Rs 22,000... The 80-page book costs Rs 120,000, ... whereas a 1931 print ... will cost Rs 25,000... The enormous hike in postal charges, five times since April 5, and the long time it takes, 14 to 15 months, against six months earlier, for parcels to reach their destinations abroad has hit his trade." ... This I did not understand... Please explain.

I did not too ! : )

Probably he means "weeks", not "months", in which case it may make sense (assuming that he has been using surface mail).