The Write Choice
HYDERABAD: Agreat book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading,” said novelist and essayist William Styron. True that given the classic titles are picked up fast and often bought again and again so much so that with some readers you may find ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ by three different publishers though Stephen Dedalus remains the same, his teacup welling with brown water, too, remains the same. And just in case you want this hardback along with a sleepy 80-year-old out-of-print edition of yellow-leaved Ulysses only for `100 head to Hyderabad Book Fair ongoing at NTR Stadium on weekdays between 2.30 pm to 8.30 pm.
As you enter dreaming about filling your basket with the chosen titles at dirt-cheap prices, the book stall ‘LeftWord Books’ catches your attention; the serif font in a mish mash of red and white gleams above a row of books on the Marxist revolutionary Che Geuvara, BR Ambdekar, Bhagat Singh, and several other titles like ‘India After Gandhi’ by historian Ramchandra Guha and ‘Blood Lies’ by American academic-author Grover Furr. The publishing house is based in Delhi and as the name itself suggests it prints majorly Leftist literature in South Asia and India. One of the visitors Suheim Maaz, a B.Tech student who was browsing through the editions shared, “I want to know more about Che Guevara.
The online portals don’t tell me enough and I can’t understand much of the textual jargon. I was looking for something simpler. And here I get this book ‘Che for Beginners’.” He smiles and shows us his purchase: the black and white glossy copy the size of a notebook complete with illustrations and photographs.
So there I was happy in the book stall with my purchase of Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘How to Change the World’ with Che’s face printed on its red cover. Another book that caught my attention in the next stall was Romila Thapar’s ‘The History of Early India: from the origins to AD 1300. I flip through the pages and catch glimpses of sentences on early Chola Kingdom. The next book store a bit ahead was ‘Sri Vasu Book Centre’ selling books by DH Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, Charlotte Lennox and other classics only for `100. Right next to the display of unclaimed old gems was a tall stand holding several editions of Archies, Tinkle, Chandamama just for `50.
The rare treasure that is almost hidden inside a corner is a dusty, wood-smelling pile of books printed in erstwhile USSR some five or six decades ago by Raduga publishers and sadly all of them are out of print. There are old heavy editions by Leo Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gorky, and Chekov. I greedily grabbed old almost torn translated edition of poems by Anna Akhmatova and a cheerful looking hardback edition of ‘A Boy by the Sea’ by Nikolai Dubov.
The front cover has a little boy on a seashore as segulls fly over a vast blue sea. The shop is in Koti and the owner Balakrishna shares about his source of the Russian books in his possession, “A lot of people who left Hyderabad for settling elsewhere sold these books to us and initially a few years ago the same would arrive in bulk. Now, the numbers have almost trickled down to one or two.” Those looking for connecting to their mother tongue should be joyous as 60 per cent of the books at the fair are in Telugu language. It is heartening to see publishing houses from remote towns like Rajahmundry, Guntur and Vijayawada.
Another book stall ‘Padam Book Company’ from Delhi has interesting titles like ‘The Light of Amsterdam’, ‘The Icarus Girl’ and even a coffee table glossy book on the Austrian symbolist artist Gustav Klimt. The owner Pradeep from East Delhi shares, “It’s not very often that books on artists are picked up, but we don’t give up hope.” Unfortunately, in a place where 335 book stalls have been put up from 10 states, the number of book stalls from Darya Ganj, Delhi has gone down disappointing readers who’d come looking for rare old editions the publishers would bring with them.
Other than that another let down is that they close sharply by 8.30 pm as a sharp voice shrieks on loudspeakers in Hindi, asking the stall owners to close down. A group of disappointed students who’d entered perhaps just 10-15 minutes ago shake their heads and move towards the exit gate. Somebody in a complaining voice anounces to his friend, “Let’s got to Nampally Exhibition, they don’t close so early!” Surprisingly, K Chandramohan, secretary of Hyderabad Book Fair defends the early closing time saying, “We do have an extension of time on weekends as the fair starts on the two days from 12 noon and continues till 9 pm. People who miss on weekdays can enjoy the fair on their off days.” Though the timing maybe disheartening the readers venture to food stalls outside and munch on masala papads, chuski and bamboo chicken prepared right in front of them. The heat from the ovens warms up the hearts of the visitors as they depart.
The book fair is on till January 28— Saima Afreen saima@newindianexpress @Sfreen