On Delhi Book Fair – 11 to 15 Sep 2019

On Delhi Book Fair – 11 to 15 Sep 2019

I was very disappointed with Delhi Book fair that concluded yesterday. It was small like an afterthoght, insignificant in scope without any classic publisher, and amalgamated with college festivals and Food tech workshop and stationery fairs. Govt publications like Sahita Kala and NBT and NSD and Gyanpeet were there because they must have to be. Small bargain publishers did not have anything worth spending evenings on - it is sad to hunt for a bargain and spend more time guessing and cussing about finding a gem and rejoicing having found it. Why should booklovers rejoice "one upmanship" of a bargain book find over the joy of finding and sharing a classic with multitudes.

I love my Delhi - where is the Delhi book fair of Winters and coldness and hot coffees and reading Raji seth or Loren Eiseley or simple joys of mountain walk wit Ruskin Bond? It is becoming unlivable in Delhi of show-offs and non-bibliophiles, who now live in Ghettos in their own worlds. Is this the degradation of times? I apologize on my gloomy language and thoughts - but the bad news pours.

I hope that the newly shifted Dariya Ganj market place flourishes in the coming months. It is one perennial joy for booklovers - for my sundays and they had to go ahead and touch it!!! Orwellian in repression, Kafkaesque in joylessness these mindless acts..

On Ruskin Bond Books

On Ruskin Bond Books

Much injustice is done to Ruskin Bond books. They are available in so many dilutions - same old stories or essays - in so many books, new covers, more "edited" versions, more publishers...I am just afraid to buy a Ruskin Bond book - old wine in new bottles is a bad idea when there are so many versions already in stock at home.

Why did the publishers not think of creating clear, unique, non-ambiguous titles for his great works, so that people can buy and collect and talk of it? If I am reading Eliot Weinberger, I can clearly say "in "Karmic traces" I found this, in "Elemental Thing" the article on China was one-sided" etc. Not so on Ruskin's essays and stories.

As an example, look at what OUP (Oxford University Press) did for Jim Corbett omnibus - two big volumes, all major books in it by title, well hard bound, superbly illustrated...If your son tumbles one sleepless eve to your bookshelf and reads the classics like this, years after, as a Bibliophile, he may recount with nostalgia and joy to his friends how that night the Maneater of Rudraprayag followed the hunter all the way back home in a rainy night, and how he felt reading that in the seclusion of his home.

I remember the story of Blossom the cow - my intro to James Herriot - because there are clear 5 books - no mix ups, and cross referential and joy to refer someone to a nook and corner of bliss.

How I wish to touch the hardback of Ruskin's books - with illustrations of Buransh trees and an old man walking an axiomatic path, a nonlinear choice option by a timid but fearless man whose joys started and ended with Dehradun and his father's love for him. I can see him in London tube, people reading their papers in Tube and him imagining a bear running off with pumpkin drying atop a house in a remote Himalayan village, or sheeps by Harsil (with mighty Bhagirathi flowing in the background) looking at him mockingly about his choice of poverty. Such a great writer deserves the respect and love at all times!

Hey, but you can ignore me - I am romantic - For years, I did not read Sherlock holmes because I wanted to get a dark tan walnut leathered hard back (a lone pipe etched on leather front) with a bookmark shaped as 221B embedded in its crumbling edifice of pages....and the need to feel the "pinch" of buying this expensive book - 3 moths salary or more - and the joy of never parting with it.