Books for delight, for ornament and for ability

Shriniwas Joshi

Shimla, in summers, hums with activities of diverse kinds. Book Fair is one such activity that is repeated every year. This time the fair was shared by three organisations – the Ojas Centre for Art and Reading Development, Delhi; the Himalayan Sahitya, Sanskriti aur Paryavaran Manch, Shimla, and the State Academy of Art, Language and Culture. The Book Fair attracted quite a few publishers, but the buyers were few and Hindi book publishers were there just to mark their presence. The book-reading habit has come down while the social media, especially television-viewing among the youth of India, is the preferred mode of gathering information or knowledge and getting entertained. National Youth Readership conducted a survey in 2010 and concluded that the southern region of India had the highest 24 per cent of the youth readers, followed by eastern and western regions, both having 22 per cent young people reading, the youth of the northern region come next with 13 per cent of readership and the central region follows north with 12 per cent youth reading books. And the youth of north-eastern region are least interested, only 7 per cent, in reading books.

Shimla is not new to the book fairs. The first fair was organised through the efforts of Arvind Kumar’ Scholastic India at The Grand Hotel Complex in 1986, in collaboration with the Department of Language and Culture. Arvind Kumar, founder of Scholastic India Pvt Ltd, who later became the director of the National Book Trust (NBT) and had served that organisation in this capacity for 11 years, collaborated with the Department of Language and Culture in the project. He is known for his book-promotional activities. He loved classical music, both Indian and Western, and also the mountains. This love of hills, probably, made him decide that a book fair could be organised in a small town like Shimla.

The only large hall in the heart of the town in 1986 was the dining hall of the Grand Hotel. It was with great difficulty that the Language and Culture Department could get this hall for arranging the book fair. It was a bigger fair than the one recently held. More than 50 publishers had participated. Vidya Stokes, the then Speaker of the Vidhan Sabha, had inaugurated it and had said, “It is a revelation to me that so many titles in Hindi are published in India”.

The venues for the book fairs in Shimla had been changing from Grand Hotel to YWCA to Sports Complex and after its renovation in the year 2009 to the Gaiety Complex. The Multipurpose Hall and the Tavern are used for the purpose. The publishers prefer Tavern to the Hall because it is dot on the Mall. Right opposite the Tavern is a book shop ‘Minerva’. Once I had gone there in search of a book to be presented to a teacher on her birthday. I asked the owner to show me the recent readable publications worthy of presenting to a teacher. He said he would definitely suggest a good book but advised me to gift the lady an umbrella too. I was surprised and asked, “Why an umbrella too?” He, in all sincerity, replied the umbrella would, at least, open on a rainy day.” It is not to be taken as a joke but a warning of the times to come.

The National Book Promotion Policy was announced by the government in the year 2012 with the theme of ‘books for all improving availability, accessibility, quality and readership’. Section 6.2 of it speaks for the importance of holding book fairs: “Book fairs and exhibitions will continue to be important components of the programmes designed to promote books and the habit of reading. The scope and coverage of books fairs and exhibitions will be expanded to reach readers in rural areas and all language groups. Publishers of books in Indian languages will be urged to organise books fairs in small towns and cluster of villages to create a climate in which a large number of people could buy and read books.” The three organisations have done an excellent job in organising a book fair in Shimla and the NBT had been organising book fairs in other towns of Himachal but the drive required from the government side is wanting.

An example is World Book Day or World Book and Copyright Day, which is a yearly event on April 23, organised by the Unesco. April 24 has been chosen for the day as Cervantes died on that date, according to the Gregorian calendar that Spain followed and Shakespeare died on the same date, according to the Julian calendar that England followed. The sun rises on the day and sets but no activity related to books or reading is held anywhere in Himachal. The day needs to be made alive and if the students of the schools are involved in it, then it would be ‘catching them young’ for book reading. No doubt, today a reader; tomorrow a leader.

Tailpiece

A friend to a friend, “What type of books do you like?” 
“Cheque books”, she replied.