Four Stories from Book Fair

4 stories from Metro rides to World Book fair at Delhi

1.       On the way back from a long 7 hour day at the book fair, at the Yamuna Bank intersection, in an uncrowded train, this guy with a heavy bag gets in and turns this way and that way. When his bag brushes real hard on me, I tap his shoulders and ask “what the hell” in an angry tone. He takes off his headphone and looks at me, and says “it seems there is no forgiving in your world” and smiles. “what a strange thing to say” I ponder. Yes, he is right, may be; I want to ask “should there be forgiveness in me, when the action you did was inconsiderate, though not intended?” I do not ask anything. Thankfully, he does not pursue either. I get down at my station on the next stop. We watch each other once, I at the stairs and he across the door panels, as train whizzes away.

2.       At the end of the day, at 8 pm, when the bookfair closes, the crowd inches to the Pragati Maidan station. A small girl is playing in the mud, her dirty sweaters held around the neck by an open safety pin. Her dad is selling some liquid that wades off dirt in clothes, yelling “No need to wash clothes this Delhi winter when Sun is invisible”. Occasionally, she looks up and gets back to her job – of digging mud to find some sharp stone or wood that she can use to dig more mud. 

3.       The kachori seller with two tin boxes mounted on the cycle handle has neatly arranged plastic bowls with two kachori’s crushed in. As soon as about 4 of us gather, he swiftly turns, opens the aluminum drum with mashed alu sabji, and pours it on with masala. Every minute is critical. As the fog mingles with steam, you notice that Winter is actually great. Legs aching, hot snacks at hand, metro lines forming, pirated book sellers shouting on the pavement, - heck, you even smile at the India physical map seller, standing like a caricature from Malgudi days quietly. Ther, in the map, is Delhi all lit up.

4.       In the crowded streets, in loud cheers and soft curses, in the dumping of the “free” accumulated garbage of pamphlets and flyers, the crowd meanders like an angry river. So much movement all around and then you see two people holding a cancer donation box and placard, saying nothing, keeping quiet. Asking us to spare a moment for the dying and dead, with all this life around. Indicating that when all this life is around is when we should consider it. In Katha upanishad, This is what Nachiketa did, when he asked his dad why he is not sacrificing in the yagya altar what he considers precious.

The World Book Fair, Delhi 2020

Nagarjuna, the eccentric hindi-political poet, is remembered by many in a book. Someone watched sadly as Safdar Hashmi enacted his last play in "Halla Bol". The amazing books of Mushtaq Ahmed Yousafi and Shamsher Rahman Faruqi came to the delight of Hindi and English readers (respectively). Perumal murugan compils the heart wrenching stories of caste abuse in south -in "Black coffee in a coconut shell" (the shell in which so called "lower caste" were served in houses of Varnas - hence the title). Gombrich's history of the world is not short at all in the "a little history of the world" - your appetite is just whetted enough to help you leap further.

And as per Murari Sharma's stories, Hills have same problems that cities have (for the "romanticists" envisioning escape) - that of politics, corruption, inequality, and poverty. Would you still go there? The revolutionary poet "Pash" stands amused at this dilemma (remember " sabse khatarnak hota hai hamare sapnon ka marjana?" that he wrote - "what is most dangerous is the death of our dreams"), the forgotten, Dalit poet (as he was called) Lal Singh Dill was not so silent his outpouring is cold and dark.

The evening is settling into a wintry cold breeze; the tired sit by the road and relish the kachori-alu still served by cyclist sellers (as in old day) - the fog engulfs the aluminum vessel and its steamy vapors of the sabzi - the hot and cold indistinguishable , the faces now blurred. A lonely bomb squad dog stands doing its job outside the Metro. The cart pushers await the loading of books, their women sitting silently by the side of the road, laughing- their old seaters thread bare (but not spirits). The World Book Fair 2020 Delhi ends.