About Book Maniac

I am Jaideep Das based in Silicon Valley California. I started Book Maniac (formerly Boi Pagol - বইপাগল)  out of passion for books. Our goal is to promote readership of writings from India and Bangladesh in the US. Although Book Maniac is based in California Bay Area but we cater to book readers all across US.

I also co-founded a non-profit Dishari Foundation to foster and teach Bengali language in the US and simultaneously help the under privileged children globally to become educated. 

So what sparked my interest in creating this initiative?

Well - it was Feb 21st 2009, International Language Day. I was in my car in Bellevue WA visiting a customer and I was tuned into the local National Public Radio channel. It was rain­ing like normally you would expect at this time of year in Seattle. The radio anchor Simon Scott from NPR’s weekend edition was interviewing Greg Anderson and David Harrison the creators of new documentary “The Linguists” who raced to different parts of the world in search of “endangered lan­guages”.  According to the duo,  some 7000 languages will be dying in near future. It stroke me hard— I felt that I needed to do something to make sure I pass on my mother tongue “Bengali” to my offspring. Although Bengali is not close to being endangered, I was feeling claustrophobic thinking how it  must feel to people  if their language was going to become extinct one day. This thought haunted me for months—eventually I ended up creating Boi Pagol and Book Maniac which has online e-commerce and event based book stalls in the bay area.