A treasure trove for book lovers

To quench the thirst of book lovers a 12-day book fair titled ‘Hyderabad National Book Fair’ has started recently at NTR Stadium. The book fair has a total of 290 stalls showcasing books from different genres like literature, education, novels, competitive, cooking, spiritual and many more.

Apart from books the visitors can also interact with their favorite writers as majority of them have come forward to know the instant feedback of their work. Every day after 5 pm readers can witnesses talk shows and dance performances at Mahaswethadevi Vedhika.

Talking about his passion, Paravastu Lokeshwar, a Hyderabad-based writer says, “I wrote 15 books till now and always wanted to know the feedback from the readers and Hyderabad Book Fair has made it possible. In the past, writers had no interest to exhibit their works at stalls. But the situation has changed in recent times after the Granthalaya Movement”.

“We are not doing it for money; it is only to interact with readers. My latest book Shaharnama is about the stories of Hyderabad people, places, buildings and culture. I like traveling. Till today I covered half of the world. I also traveled on my two-wheeler to Chhattisgarh forests to learn about the tribal people and their living conditions,” he adds.

Book sellers from Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Kolkata are also showcasing their books. “Topudu Bandi is a new concept in selling books and distribution. We started it two years back. We travelled 1000 km in 100 days to various villages across Telangana state. Our main objective is to establish a library in rural areas. Most of our books are helpful for rural people. Till now we covered five districts in Telangana, where we provided 300 books for each library in a village,” said Sadhiq Ali, Owner, Topudu Bandi, who is now a regular at the fair.

Besides book stalls there is also a stall called Code Tantra. It is cloud software where any person can easily learn coding on their own. Anshu Malik from Code Tantra demonstrated live coding. “It is a self learning tool like YouTube. This is the first interactive software in the world. Even a Class VI student can easily learn coding using this software.”

For people who want to change their handwriting there is a stall named ‘Happy Handwriting Workshops’ by Y Mallikharjuna Rao, a renowned Calligrapher and a Graphologist, who listed techniques which help in turning crazy handwriting beautiful in just 21 days.

The book fair has stalls of volga rachanalu, children’s literature, Telangana home cooking, arts and letters, manchi pustakam and more. The Fair is open all seven days till December 26 from 2 pm to 8.30 pm weekdays and 12 pm to 8.30 pm weekends, at NTR Stadium.

By V Sateesh Reddy