All over the country, book shops are
closing down. And all over the country , litfests are springing up. So there is
a paradox for you.
Yes,
I know that many people buy books online because of the discounts they are
offered. Also, many people don't venture out of their homes as much as they
used to -except, of course, for the purpose of “eating out''. But true
booklovers will always prefer a bookshop, even a small one, to the impersonal
advantages of online shopping.
Book-lovers
like to browse, they like to roam around a well-stocked bookshop; they like to
discover new authors, rediscover old authors; they like to fondle books,
examine their shape and texture, appreciate a good cover or dust jacket, dwell
upon a book, put it back on the shelf, and end up by buying something quite
different from what they had come looking for! In the bookshop, you might meet
a fellow book-lover, or even an old friend (this has happened to me quite
often); or, if the bookseller is a friendly sort (as he often is) you can have
a chat about the new boys on the block -who's selling or who isn't -and who's
got writer's cramp or writer's block -and why , today, there are far more
writers than there are readers. In other words, all the latest gossip! Whenever
I want to gossip about books and writers, I drop in at a friendly bookstore.
You can gossip at a litfest, but litfests only last for three or four days at
the most, whereas a bookshop is fairly permanent -until it is forced to closed down.
So
where have all the book-lovers gone? Are they all attending litfests? In my
limited experience of attending litfests, I have found that genuine booklovers
are rather thin on the ground. Of course, there will be a sprinkling of
wellknown authors, a fairly large gathering of not so well-known authors, an
even larger gathering of would-be authors, and (if it's Jaipur or Mumbai or
Kolkata) a huge gathering of members of the public all heading for the
refreshment stalls.
Somewhere
in the crowd, if you hunt for it, you may find a stall selling books.Just one,
usually. For some strange reason the space is given out on a contract basis.
Books have to take a backseat at these events, and sometimes they will end up
splattered with ice cream or tomato sauce.
Everyone
loves a good mela.You meet interesting people.Like the chap who asked me, “Are
you still writing?“ even though my latest book was staring him in the face. Or
the fond mother who tells me her little girl, who is six years old, has just
written a novel, and would she qualify for the Guinness Book of Records? Or if
not Guinness, then Limca... I would be the last person to discourage anyone
from writing, but I do feel that some simple grammar and composition would
create a great foundation for literary success. Twenty to thirty years ago
there were no litfests, just the occasional book fair. Even book launches were
uncommon. The writers of my youth, be they RK Narayan in India or Graham Greene
in England, were famous as writers but their faces were unfamiliar. You were
known by your name and not by your profile. There was no television to
broadcast your image across the globe.You could be famous and anonymous at the
same time. At best, a smudgy blackand -white photograph would appear on the
jacket of your book; you could be mistaken for Stan Laurel or Elizabeth Taylor
or a visitor from another planet. The only exception was Ernest Hemingway, an
extrovert who went out of his way to garner publicity and who loved to make
headlines. In his obsession with centrestage he drove himself over the edge.
Well,
our litfests do provide our authors with the opportunity to be centrestage, if
only for an hour or two. It accounts for the popularity of these litfests,
which have spread across the country like wildfire. The world of the old Peter
Sellers song could be altered to `From Patna to Darjeeling I have done my share
of reading!' Or more specifically, `speaking', as these are basically Talk
Shows.
Litfests
happen in a big way in our larger cities, but they have also caught on in small
towns and hill stations -Shillong, Mussoorie, Shimla, Kasauli, Agra,
Trivandrum... the list gets longer by the year. Thimpu in Bhutan recently held
the sixth edition of its Mountain Echoes Festival: a sweet name for the event.
And here on my desk is an invitation to a litfest in Sangrur, in Punjab.
Sangrur? No one in my household had heard of such a place, but I remembered it
from the early 1960s, when I had a glimpse of an old palace surrounded by a sea
of flood waters. Sangrur was once the capital of the princely state of Jind.
Now Jind is in Haryana while Sangrur is in Punjab. I am told by the convener of
the litfest that by the end of November the wheat fields will be a lush green
carpet “laid out from one end of Punjab to the other.'' How splendid! But for
my wobbly knees, I would be tempted to attend. I love the idea of those lush
green fields going on forever. But I would only play truant, abandon the
serious business of the litfest and go for a romp in the fields, on one leg if
necessary .
Good
luck to Sangrur, and good luck to all those book-lovers who are doing their
best to keep the reading habit alive. In spite of what people say, there are
far more young readers today than there were thirty or forty years ago. They
are a small minority , true, but then reading has always been a minority
pastime. In my boyhood, when there was no TV , no Internet, no video games,
only a few of us read books.Everyone read comics! We who read books are the
lucky ones. Our favorite authors are our companion for the life.
A
publisher friend tells me there is a slump in the book trade, both here and in
the West. But there is always a slump on the book trade. Selling literature has
always been a risky business. To write a good book is difficult enough; to sell
it is another kind of challenge. But I am encouraged by the little people who
still sell books -like the young man in Bhubaneswar who sells them from the
back of a Maruti van. He has a small turnover, and a stock limited by space,
but he attracts a number of discriminating and curious readers. And perhaps
that's the way to go forward. Keeping it simple.
Source | Times of India | 4 October 2015
