Teena's Diary entry -Chennai Book fair

Dear diary,

I owe this post to some of my friends. How shall i begin? How about once upon a time 4 IITians set out for a book fair :) nah.... pretty conventional huh ? well IITians !!! and book sale !!!! . Well if you have lived inside an IIT and if you belong to a non- tech background it would amaze you. But chances are minimal that someone belonging to that category would read this.



When I joined IIT I often heard people saying " why do we need a humanities dept" ? some said "man I wish they taught enough vocab for CAT and GRE and stayed to that alone " . When I met a bunch of Btechs at chapel I never wanted or wished to know them. Well that's history today they are very much a part of my life here, I hope I mean something to them too :)








Books are my passion , my conversations often trail to what I read and whose thoughts inspire me. So when it was time for Chennai book fair I was excited, but I never found anyone outside my department who read, naturally people here read other books to cure insomnia so when Jils and Sonu said they are joining me to the fair I thought they were joking .. but they weren't.

Book shopping is the only shopping that makes sense to me, with clothes and jewellery I am pathetic. Sonu was the highest bidder hunting for biographies and books on Einstein in the 300 + stalls there.

Book lovers identify covers from a distance like dogs sniff and find food, we were hunting for a copy of Alchemist for podimol our fourth member frevently that any cover with yellow and red cover page would draw us like travellers being drawn to mirage.

We paid homage to my favourite stall " left word" and got some food for thought with leftist lit. Sonu kept jumping for biographies - he is a collector of books rather avid reader , he needs treatment for compulsive shopping :P

Jils and I preferred pirated books so chose only rare books from the stall, Sonu dead against piracy kept buying originals, podi seemed lost in between she was trying to upgrade herself from Nancy drew to not so intellectual but digestible stuff - you know like kids proceeding from cerelac to solid food :) she finally managed to get Alchemist and Tottochan though i am sure she is reading none these days.





It was also an oppurtunity for us to share stories of books we read, viewpoint on ideologies and on our way there and way back we were like excited kids talking on and on, Jils says once you make a tradition of going to a book fair it continues, I cant stand crowds but that days among thousands of people and commotion in 300 stalls I discovered bliss.

May the book lovers tradition of going to annual fair continue... Jils, Sonu and Podi this one's for your cheers !!