Scarcely a week goes by without a literature festival or a book fair somewhere in India. Sometimes more than one in the same city, I'm told. You can barely squeeze through the streets of Delhi, Bangalore or Kolkata without tripping over a writer of YA fiction, or a newly minted poet clutching her first slim volume of verse and hurrying to a panel discussion on "The Poetry of Protest in Subaltern South Asia".
Leonard is organizing the Goa Book Fair in Margao from 4-8 Jan 2024. The World Book Fair will be held in Delhi from 10-18 Feb 2024. The Jaipur Literature Festival is from 1-5 Feb. Isn't there a 2023/24 GALF edition? The other day, I visited the recently opened *The Bookshop Inc *at Lodhi Colony in Delhi. It opened soon after the original *The Bookshop* at Jorbagh pulled down its shutters for the last time in October this year. *The Bookshop* at Jorbagh was one of those 'iconic' bookshops of Delhi (which, as far as I can tell, means a 50-year old bookshop run by some kids who inherited it from their father). The late great KD Singh, founder owner of *The Bookshop, *had passed away of cancer in 2014, and his daughter kept the shop going for a while. However, some of the employees of *The Bookshop* (and Singh's business partner, Sonal Narain) started their own *Bookshop* clone in Lodhi last month, so all is not lost. When I dropped in on a Saturday evening, the place was packed with Fabindia-clad Delhiites buying slim volumes of medieval Arabic poetry in translation, and there was a book reading by Manjula Padmanabhan in a tiny space at the back. The shelves were laden with excellent books, evidently chosen with great love and care. The in-store Christmas tree was made entirely of books. Earlier this month, I was at *Broadway *in Panjim, picking up random books more out of habit than need. There was a book by PS Sreedharan Pillai (the Governor of Goa) on display; probably his 200th, as the man is an inveterate scribbler. "Do you know this author?", I asked the person at the counter. She had never heard of him. Damn, I miss Khalil. Sajan -- *** Please be polite and on-topic in your posts. *** --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Goa Book Club" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-book-club/CA%2B2EU71DHfemb_4S2K8ZYsJhR0foMpXTTfeYL77LJJ%2BxJsUikQ%40mail.gmail.com.
