What is usually a day full of joy…it can be so many different things for different people. It can be loads of shopping, it can be completing a pending work, it can be meeting people you love and so much more. It can also be doing something you love doing. So, among many other things Suyash and I have in common, one is the love for reading books. And this took us to the “Delhi World Book Fair”,early this year. To be honest Suyash was supposed to go to sign his books and I just tagged along.
The 15-minute visit to sign the books turned out to be of more than 3 hours. Though I am both into physical books and e-books, for the sake of lack of storage I am more into e-books at present. But seeing so so many books right in front of your eyes can you stop yourself…naah. Soon after Suyash finished signing his books we both drowned ourselves in the world of knowledge, fiction, fantasy, mythology…to name a few. We had a lovely time browsing through our preferred sections. And we also proved that if you love what you are doing you are not tired. After selecting books when we used to reach the billing counter we always had smiles on our face.
But I am not writing today to write like a paragraph on “A visit to Book Fair”. Something hit me that day. The book fair was crowded…all the sections were full of people… so much that there was a long line to enter the Penguin stall. The billing counters had 8-10 persons attending to the customers…still there was waiting time. I was feeling very happy seeing people browsing and buying books. It brought a different kind of joy…like wow it’s so great to see people still wanting this when mobiles and social media have become a major part of our lives and the way to spend our time. While waiting for our turn to come to pay for the books, i was trying to absorb the ambience when something struck me. Where was the crowd that I usually see flocking pubs and discs on weekends. I don’t want to divide anybody in a particular economic class, but that was something so evident there. There was absence of any brand names on peoples’ accessories which is now a days so loudly visible in airports, 5 stars, shopping malls…why …? The people who maybe would have to think twice before they splurge were still happily spending away on books…but the crowd who can easily spend few thousands without a second thought was missing. And this left me with a swarm of thoughts.
Where my heart was full of respect and joy for each and every visitor there that day… it also lead me thinking where is the society going… why is a certain section no longer interested in visiting a book fair. I know you can buy books online today and going to buy something physically is taken over by online shopping. But is book fair not worth an Instagram story…so why visit it…? will you look less trendy among your peers…? This is the trail of thoughts going in me. I may be absolutely wrong in my observation but that is what I felt standing there. But I am happy that the love for books is still alive …as Ernest Hemingway told “There is no friend loyal as a book”.