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.