At last, the Book Fair.

There has been much hullabaloo over it. The regular organizers are only a side-organizer this time. But the spirit is all the same. A considerable crowd on the second day, same old ‘adda’ on the fair grounds, same ‘jhari mara’, and importantly, all the big publishers galore.
It happened all of a sudden. A long drive to the fair on a sunny Sunday afternoon, then book-hunting, and ( of course ) book-shopping to heart’s content. One of my addictions. Anirban-daa, a 3rd yr medico ( a ‘gola’ guy and a die-hard potter fan ) with whom I was doing all the combing, bought a combined LOTR ( although he has the e-books, having a hard-copy is above everything. Especially reading all the LOTR on the comp is quite a herculean task! ) And on my ‘recommendation’ he bought the Bill Bryson book, ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’. I think it is one of the all-time classics in popular science. For me, first of all, the book I was searching for a long time, ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’, a nice biography of Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel. No doubt a collective book. Then the perennial ‘Selfish Gene’, and if you get it, then make sure you read Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ ( as advised to me by a RS in the insti ). And I bought a book I have no idea about, JD Watson’s ‘Double Helix’.

It was the fair’s second day only. Many stalls still incomplete, many books unpacked or unshelved. I didn’t find Amir Aczel’s book on Fermat’s Last Theorem. Instead I got the Simon Singh one. But it has very less technical info, suited best for the lay reader. Another book, Michio Kaku’s ‘Hyperspace’ caught my eyes.

And, to end it all, a long drive back home, with the late evening chill brushing your face, stopping by for dinner at a roadside dhaba. Just the stuff weekend dreams ( or dream weekends  ) are made of.