CHENNAI
Book FAIR 2017
Akash
Sajikumar, II MA ENGLISH
Books
are always a delight to feed on whenever you want. I am not that kind of a
voracious reader but I do love to add on to my Huge shelf which I dedicate for
the collection of my favourite books. So when I heard about the Chennai Book
Fair 2017 I was pretty much excited about it. It was on a Pongal holiday that some
of my friends and myself, we decided to roam around the city with an intention
of going to the book fair. The fair was organised by the Book Sellers and Publishers
Association of South India at St. George Anglo- Indian Higher Secondary School
near Chetpet, which was like an hour from my college.
Only
after reaching the place did we realise that it was a huge book fair with lots
of people from children to great grandfathers swarming in and out of the place.
It was like the book lovers all over Chennai finding a place to meet together
with the utlimate aim of grabbing their favourites from the numerous books
stalls over there. We digged our way towards the stalls in the midst of the
huge crowd and successfully got into place.
The
stalls were orderly arranged in neat rows so as to make the searching easy. We
roamed around the whole place; in fact, the smell of fresh pages welcomed me
into it. There was this huge collection of Enid Blyton series which I used to
read a lot when I was a kid which took me back to my school library for a
while. I was fascinated by the writings of Osho and my primary intention was to
get a copy of his book The Art of Living
before leaving the place.
As
I had intended, I found a huge shelf full of Osho’s collection at the Harper
Collins with this book on the top. There was also a huge collection of Agatha
Christie spread over which is a little confusing to pick from.
From
there we went into Om Shakthi stall which was one among the second hand book stores.
As expected, there was a huge rush over there and to select books from there was
a gordian task. But I got a few classics from there for reasonable prices which
was more than enough.
Apart
from the book stalls there were stalls put up for food around the place.
Endless walk through the book stores had drawn us towards the food stalls. The
huge sighs of tiredness was replaced with funny conversations within ourselves
while we were filling up our tummies. It was a wonderful day with a lot of
exposure to a variety of books and authors. On our way back to college we had a
conversation in the train about the fair exchanging the books that we had
bought from the fair within ourselves.
