Kevin McCloud slumming it in Mumbai, Gordon Ramsay reducing a vast culture to a samosa. Welcome to Channel 4′s Indian Winter season If what follows smacks a little of gloating, I apologise – there should really be a lot, heaped ­teaspoons of the stuff. You see, I’m off to India next week on ­holiday. Most of it will be spent in the city of Kolkata (or Calcutta, as it used to be known), which is supposedly having its own cold snap – but still the weather ­forecasts come with pictures of a big yellow sun , rather than symbols of empty gritting lorries. Kolkata in winter has more going for it than temperatures of 27C, though. In a few days’ time, the city’s boi mela begins . Book festival, that means in Bengali, and it’s a more fitting term than fair. Book fairs are for London and Frankfurt – trade events at which contracts are auctioned off and retailers decide on future three-for-two offers. But Kolkata’s boi mela is the world’s biggest book fair: two million people came last time, and that was an off-year. It’s also one of the most important events in the city’s cultural life. When the fair was cancelled in 2008, Kolkata’s mayor and chief minister still staged an “inauguration evening”, where they speechified about the ­importance of books. And when it’s up and running, the boi mela makes that point all too clearly: ­Penguin and HarperCollins ­exhibit alongside sellers of ­Marxist ­literature, and tiny girls in glasses ­lecture bewildered mothers on PG ­Wodehouse . “No, no, no! ” I once overheard. “This is Blandings .

Original Source Channel 4′s view of India is a cliche