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Literary Review
SPOTLIGHT
Browsing the Book Fair
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RANJIT LAL recounts the many simple pleasures that awaited him at the Delhi Book Fair.
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AFP
Ruskin Bond autographing his books at the Fair.
YOU needed a good pair of walking shoes, a sun hat and a bottle of water as essential equipment if you were to enjoy Delhi's World Book Fair, for, it is a long haul from the car park to the halls. Also it would have been useful if there had been someone at the entrance giving out leaflets with information regarding what was on show exactly where. But once you're inside, and coming to terms with the Delhi house numbering logic with which the stalls appear to have been numbered, well, the books take over.
For a writer, I guess the best tonic is simply seeing so many books gathered together at one address. It means that (as writers sometimes tend to feel) you are not alone in this endeavour; there are thousands of impossibly optimistic souls hammering away at typewriters or computers (or still, actually writing longhand, which frankly is the original way of doing it!) hoping their ideas will set the world on fire, or maybe give some people a happy time, and others a bad time (by putting out some unpalatable truths). You simply gaze at the rows and rows of shiny multicoloured books, and think, well if they can do it, why not you? This is especially helpful if you're low on ideas or as writers like to say, "between books". And hey, there are so many thousand publishers out there too so the chances that at least one will swallow your idea or manuscript hook line and sinker, can't be that bad! Writing is normally a solitary pursuit so this "meeting of the clan" so to speak, can be pretty invigorating.
That apart, there's the simple pleasure of being in the company of so many thousand books, and you don't have to be a writer to enjoy that. There is something about books that the electronic media just cannot and will never be able to match. Each book that you read is like an event in your life; the time when you met its characters and shared their trials and tribulations and love affairs and murders and diabolical plots to rule the world! Or something that changed the way you thought, or taught you that there can be as many perspectives as there are people in the world. And some books of course, in which you tried desperately to figure out what the hell was going on and why the hell the author couldn't write straight! And unlike the electronic media, books allow you to interpret events in the context of your own personal experiences; you have to conjure up the images in your mind and imagination instead of dumbly being spoon-fed every detail on a screen, no matter how spectacularly. One pleasant and flattering (perhaps) bonus is when what you've read and imagined, subsequently matches up perfectly with the scene shown on the screen. Great minds, you think, and let's forget about the fools!
Then there is the pleasure of meeting old books, which you thought were long dead and gone. Bookstores these days have space only for the new and recent and media-hyped "best-selling" but at Book Fairs, publishers often display their entire catalogues. There are books you remember from your childhood, suddenly popping out of the woodwork, so to speak, clad perhaps in shiny new covers, but just the same between them! It is the place to make impulse purchases, to grab a book which lurked in the recesses of your memory and which suddenly presented itself in front of you like an old almost forgotten part of your life. And there is the additional pleasure of being able to browse and wander more freely (especially if you come early); most book shops in Delhi are incredibly cramped and badly lit, where you spend more time, muttering "excuse me" and "sorry" as you thread your way between the displays, than scanning the titles.
Of course they're expensive, or shall we say, many of us are not prepared to pay high three figure sums for something that is made of paper, and which can be finished in a day or two (but whose impact may last a lifetime). Well, a meal at a restaurant can cost as much, and is over in a matter of an hour — unless you suffer from indigestion later on. A book, resting on your shelf, will usually last longer than you do, and will always be there to welcome you when you get back home. And that is always pretty reassuring.
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