My Beloved Books, writes Disney Brar

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So many books, so little time-Frank Zappa

Books are portals to another world. They  toss up worlds of possibilities for a reader to dig into, they are a journey and a destination onto themselves. In Books everything is possible right from unicorns digging into cheese popcorns, to aliens romancing humans, dragons watching films, to fairies delivering pizzas, monsters cooking meals, to ghosts hosting humans for supper, otherworldly creatures visiting us mortals for a cup of tea, to ancient civilisations thriving on other planets walking down the Times Square enjoying a bottle of chilled beer, all to entertain and enchant us. And for a while to take us away from the stresses and responsibilities hovering over our heads. While skimming through the leaves of a book, we navigate not just parallel worlds and universes but also transcend the limitations imposed on our physical and mental selves not just by Newton’s Law of Gravity but also the mundane workings of everyday life.

Books open up horizons hitherto unknown, new worlds crop  up at the turn of  every new page, new characters enter our life with each new story unveiled and new story plots keep us hooked to the tomes we cherish. Over the period of time books have advanced from using parchments and vellums (calf-skins)  to glossy paperbacks. In fact not many know that the public libraries appeared in the middle ages and during that time books were kept chained to shelves or desks to prevent them from being stolen. 

Cut to the present times when books have now advanced from their  brick-and-mortar settings to online editions popular with the Gen Z on platforms like Amazon Kindle, Pratilipi, Libby, Open Library Google Play Books, Storytel to Wattpad. Besides these days we also have many e-book stores, regional storytelling apps and digital libraries. In fact if you are looking for older, classic literature  and out-of-print books for free then Project Gutenberg is for you to explore. There are also many online book clubs and libraries to sift from.

Vintage is old

But all said and done, there is nothing to beat the earthy mustiness of  old books-that perfect mix of Vanilla and Almonds, and the nostalgia of holding an old paperback edition in your hand, where every page does not just narrate the words penned on it but also tells the stories of all those people who have held and read them to find their own meaning from them. 

As we celebrated the Happy National Book Lovers Day  on August 9, we at The North News got talking to city based Bibliophile’s into what makes books in our life, a timeless treasure to cherish and behold forever. Also why the books are needed much more now than ever.

 Sakoon Singh, PhD, Novelist and Associate Professor, Department of English, DAV College, Sector 10, Chandigarh stresses on the importance and the urgent need for inculcating the habit of reading books today, “We live in curious times. Straight out of dystopic fiction, the AI giant Anthrope has just pulped millions of books in the race to feed their LLMs. Who is allowing this mutilation ?  While this is happening, more books than ever before are also being published today. But what we have to worry about today is encouraging an authentic culture that fosters reading. It includes leisure and a love of books. My ideal is a world where literature can enable the growth of just societies and better humans. A society where books can offer an Imaginative refuge and a lens to empathise deeply with another human. In that book is a remarkable human creation. And while technology might grow by leaps and bounds books will continue to occupy that cardinal space.” Taking her pick from her  favourite books, Singh adds, “My favourite books include Toni Morrison’s-Jazz, Amitav Ghosh’s – The Hungry Tide, Vikram Seth’s-The Golden Gate, Kazuo Ishiguro’s-Buried Giant. Besides which I love Sufi poetry of our masters like Bulleh Shah and Baba Farid and Gurbani poetry composed by the Gurus from the Guru Granth Sahib.”

Dr. Archana.R. Singh, professor and Chairperson, School of Communication Studies, Panjab University shares, “Right now my favourite title is, The Rewrite Circle, but otherwise I have read popular literature more than classics. From Charles Dickens to Barbara Cartland and Mills and Boons during my school/ college days.
Presently I read Indian women centric literature more than others. The shift is unintentional. Jhumpa Lahiri, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Kiran Desai and Anita Desai amongst others. Latest books that I read are by Yuval Noah Harari and Banu Mushtaq. Right now I am reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. Other than that I read a lot of poetry, whether classics like Dinkar and Ghalib or modern day poetry by my fellow poets of Chandigarh. I enjoy reading.” Singh has authored four books- Mass Communication in prevention and control of AIDS, Kavita Toh Kahi Nahin, Beyond the hashtag: A decade of Twitter activism in India and The Rewrite Circle.

Further Joint Director (Retd) Department of Industries, Punjab, Kuldeep Brar, shares, “For me, two aspects  define a complete man, the reasoning intellect and the emotional faculty. The satisfaction of both is true knowledge. Books contain that distilled knowledge of the greatest thinkers of the world. I have a need to understand the world, our place in the Universe and the meaning of life. For this I resort to philosophy to understand the mystery called life and to Astrophysics to understand the actual working of the Universe and our place in it because philosophy needs to be buttressed by hard evidence otherwise it merely remains hypothetical. In addition one has to also  satisfy the finer sentiments and emotions  for which I  resort to poetry.  Poetry lets your imagination fly beyond the constraints of a mundane life and its limitations. It gives you that real internal peace. Both combined give you true understanding and  happiness.” Adding more he says, “My favourite books & authors are, Philosophical Essays – Bertrand Russell, Man and Superman – GB Shaw, The Myth of Sisyphus – Albert Camus, Candide – Voltaire, Les Miserables – Hugo, Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe.” 

Brar is also a patron of poetry, nods he, “Edgar Allan Poe, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Fitzgerald translation) Keats, Shelly and Coleridge are my all time favourites.”

While Shiraz Saini, Professional storyteller, English educator and the founder of Smiling Sprigs, a company which collaborates with city based schools, activity centres and libraries, says, “Books taught me to listen to voices beyond my own, to travel without moving, to wonder without limits, and to see the world through countless eyes. My first memory of books is when my mother read to me and later sitting in the corner of my school library, wading through words and pictures, lying on my bed every afternoon and reading voraciously..anything and everything…even a Thesaurus!. As a storyteller, books surround me in every nook and corner of my home.” Ask of her favourite authors and Shiraz adds on an excited note, “Ruskin Bond….love his work and all his stories..still haven’t met him!! And Sudha Murty’s …Grandma’s bag of stories.”

So what’s your pick?

Where to buy old books?

Patronise old books

1. Chandigarh keeps hosting book fairs and yearly exhibitions like the recently concluded Lock The Box , where you get to just pay once and fill a box with  your favourite books right from Fiction, Non-fiction, Children, Teen Fiction, Classics to Coffee Table Books.
2. The fair underway at The Exhibition Ground in Sector 34, where one can buy paperback old editions of books. On display are classics to the recently published books by popular authors. On display are many books and if you are lucky enough you never know, you can come across  masterpieces like, The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K.Rowling, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, To Let by John Galsworthy, Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koester, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov besides other authors, editions and books.
3. Chandigarh’s most humble second-hand book markets are in Sector 15 and Attawa, Sector 42, Chandigarh where you can pick and choose from old books. Besides shops which sell old books.