Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore   

Bangalore Book Festival ends today

By Our Special Correspondent

Bangalore Sept. 20. The first ever Bangalore Book Festival concludes on Sunday. During the ten days, the event held at Palace Grounds would have seen close to one lakh visitors and at least half of them returned home loaded with books of their choice.

What made the Bangalore Booksellers and Publishers Association conduct the book festival was the urgent need to revive the book-reading habit, especially among the young, according to its President, Balram Sadhwani. "TV, Internet and videogames occupy too much of a youngster's time, and the pleasure of reading is almost forgotten. Introducing children to the wonderful world of books will create a new generation of readers," he explained.

More than 270 stalls spread over 50,000 sq. ft were occupied by scores of Indian and overseas publishers. Some of the best known imprints such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Macmillan rubbed book-jackets with others. The Indian language publishers were given stalls at concessional rates and people eagerly bought books in Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam.

Books on the latest trends in information technology were displayed next to stalls with books on religion and philosophy. The variety in dictionaries was almost mind-boggling.

Weekends saw whole families descending on the venue, hesitant at first and then happily browsing and buying books. Children wanted the latest in Shaktiman comics and Nancy Drew storybooks and parents balanced it by also buying what they felt were more educational publications.

The Bangalore Book Festival had a number of events connected with the literary world. Eminent persons ranging from the Kannada scholar, Chandrashekara Kambar, to the Indo-Anglian writer, Shashi Deshpande, were honoured. There were essay-writing and quiz competitions for students. While there was a Rs. 10 entrance fee, thousands of passes had been distributed in schools and colleges.

Booklovers and collectors in Bangalore do hope the book festival will become an annual event as it has in many other cities.

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