Nuts and bolts
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The recently concluded Chennai Book Fair had some surprises, writes SUBASH JEYAN.
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SUBASH JEYAN
READING, most readers would like to think, is communion. You know, that sacred space you create for yourself amidst the tumble and bustle of life where you sit with your favourite author/ book in the favourite corner of your world with your favourite brew in attendance. You almost forget you paid for the book; it's almost as if out of your infinite love for the book, you willed it into being. As you let yourself in into the world of ideas/ narrative and get immersed in the aesthetics or politics depending on your dispensation, the world stays out.
Well, tumble and bustle have a way of getting back at you. If only once a year, for ten days. Where the nuts and the bolts, in fact the full assembly line and the industry behind your quiet evenings are on glorious display. The annual Chennai Book Fair had all the big names in the Indian publishing industry participating along with a large number of Tamil publishing houses. But, being a fair targeted at the reader as a consumer, one did not come across any unnecessary appendages like special reading sessions by authors or anything else that might take the focus away from the business at hand. Plenty of discounts, of course, were to be had.
If all those hoardings and advertisements for hefty discounts were any indication of the kind of books that are popular among the reading public, then one has to confess that the Chennai reading public has an insatiable urge to better itself or at least its younger generation. Didn't you know, the BPO business is booming. Text books and guides seemed to be the focus of most of the participating publishers and self-improvement books were everywhere, from astrology to books that improved your appearance and spoken English, in fact anything that could possibly make you a better product. Hence, it was something of a surprise to see a young girl, Hina, walk away from a stall clutching Dracula and Great Expectations. These books, explained her father, were not available at the school library. Whatever happened to all those children's publishing houses that wanted to provide our children with books grounded in our reality? Offshoring, I guess. Look at it this way. Globalisation, if nothing else, brings its own delicious ironies.
There were other surprises too. Not many, but surprises still. Adaiyalam (Identity, loosely translated), for instance. A Tamil publishing house based in Puthanatham, near Tiruchi, Tamil Nadu. Adaiyalam seemed to be quietly demonstrating that there is a readership for serious and stimulating books on contemporary issues, provided the publisher knows what she/ he wants, gets his/ her focus right and sticks to it. A readership, moreover, that is willing to actually buy the books because Adaiyalam seemed to be doing well and not just at the fair.
The agenda it has set for itself is certainly ambitious. On the one hand it publishes original fiction and prose by authors in Tamil. Writers of significance, who have been given the quiet go-by, for whatever reason, by the mainstream, like Pramil and the Dalit writer K. Daniel. Interestingly, it has brought in voices previously not heard much in Tamil by publishing Sri Lankan Tamil authors. On the other hand, Adaiyalam also aims to bring to Tamil readers the best in contemporary Indian and global writing through translations. A collection of essays on the Gujarat carnage originally published in The Economic and Political Weekly, Kancha Ilaiah's Why I am Not a Hindu and Asghar Ali Engineer's Islam: Critical Perspectives are some of the works it has already translated and published in Tamil. On the cards is an agreement with OUP to translate into Tamil about 150 of their titles. M. Sadhiq, of Adaiyalam, says that they typically publish 15 to 20 books a year. All the books are uniformly very well designed and produced and priced realistically. The collected works of Pramil (hardbound, 468 pages), for instance, is priced at Rs. 230. Paperbacks are much cheaper. Interestingly, Sadhiq is a qualified pharmacist.
As one came out of the fair, one noticed that, as with most things Indian, there were plenty of parallel texts on offer. Stringed around the main book fair were a profusion of mini impromptu book stalls hurriedly put together on the pavements and offering all those self-improvement books at rock bottom prices. The market rules, doesn't it?
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