'Quite catchy and worth emulating...'

AN AFTERNOON SPENT WITH BOOKS

Anu M Varghese

I started on my journey to the place where the 40^th Chennai Book Fest was being conducted, with a lot of enthusiasm and ardent hope that I will surely find a couple of books that suits my tastes. On reaching there, I was really marveled by the way the entire thing was organized - over 700 stalls, each with 1000s of books, under one single roof. 

The happiness that I experienced when I found myself amidst a whole lot of books is something that cannot be contained in words. A unique aroma that you get from the fresh pages of a book invited me with open arms into each and every stall but as I was very sure that I won’t be able to visit all the stalls with the limited time that I had in my hand, I just strolled in, looking for a stall with books that were of my interest.

Being a person who prefers autobiography over other genres, my eyes searched for interesting works in this genre. I was really amused by the plethora of books that each stall had. 

My search ended in a stall named Permanent Book Fair Trust (Stall Number 70), which had quite a number of autobiographies amongst its collections. I believe, the special inclination that I have towards this genre in-spite of the fact that all these works run into a number of pages, might be because of the fact that they are realistic, something that has happened and above all each such work will have a lesson in itself which I have found quite catchy and worth emulating. This particular shop had quite a lot of autobiographies in it - right from Gandhiji’s The Story of My Experiments with Truth to the latest release, An Unsuitable Boy by Karan Johar. I found it really hard to control myself as I felt like picking up all the books that I didn’t have in my possession and running out. I was also balled out by the number of people who turned up for the event. 

In today’s “virtual century” where you get a copy of almost all the books on one click, it was really a rejuvenating feeling to see a whole lot of people like me who preferred to pick up their favourite books by feeling the pleasure of it by sensing it with all their five senses. It gave me a realization that book fairs are still a major calendar event and will hopefully continue to be……