When you find Lays chips packet and Coke bottles in village kiosks across the country, you feel there is nothing remote any longer. But Books? In so many II and III tier cities and towns, you will not find a book shop or a library!
It can be frustrating for those with books in their blood, like it was for Akshaya Rautaray and Satabdi Mishra who met at a book store in Bhubaneshwar three years ago and got chatting.
“We got talking about reading habits of the people,” says Satabdi, “and the non-availability of books beyond a few urban pockets.”
“And,” follows-up Akshaya, “if at all you happen to find any, then those are only textbooks, grammar or guide books!” “Why don’t people read good story books for pleasure?” wonders Satabdi.
A few more meetings later, both realised they wanted to do the same thing – take books to the people, especially to those who had little or no access to them. It was the passion that made them to backpack books and walk, trek, travel by buses and autos to Koraput, a tribal district in their home State – Odisha.
“We displayed the books on the roads, at bus stops and any public spaces for everybody to come and have a look,” says Satabdi. That is how the Walking BookFairs (WBF) was born in January 2014 and when their friends started believing in their innovative idea, they bought a second hand van and 1,000 English and Oriya books on credit and rolled off covering 10,000 km and 30 districts in their State. They travelled deep into the interiors and stopped at several small towns on the way. “Wherever we went, our mobile bookshop gathered crowd,” says Akshaya. If adults came out of curiosity, children were super-excited to see the pop-up books and colourful illustrations, something perhaps they had never seen before.
“We realised how the common man feels intimidated by the thought of entering a book store. When we took books on to the road, it was for the entire public and people did not hesitate to come and see,” says Satabdi.
The two even spent extra time with children teaching them how to read and were very happy when some of the books got sold. Buoyed by the response, they opened a book shack and named it the Walking BookFairs Bookstore and Tea Café in Bhubaneswar, where they sell all books at 20 per cent discount round-the-year. They also promote good books, writers and artists and in a short span the little garden outside the one room store has evolved into a literary hotspot, with regular reading sessions by authors and poets and visits of well known writers.
“We do what we love to do,” say the couple. And last month they again hit the roads. This time they customised a new pick-up mini truck with shelves and stacked it with over 4,000 books and named their road trip as “Read More India”. Between December 15 and March 15, they plan to cover 10,000 km across 20 States stopping at schools and colleges, exhibition grounds, residential colonies, public spaces, in front of cafes and malls, by the beach, basically anywhere that they can park and open their world of books to people.
Well stocked with best sellers and latest titles, classics, fiction, non-fiction and children’s books – all in English -- they started from Bhubaneshwar and have so far been to Chattisgarh, Khamam district in Telengana, Hyderabad, Ongole, Gudur, Chennai, Auroville in Puducherry, Madurai, Kanyakumari, Kochi and Kollam.
Their book truck attracts lot of onlookers with its display of books. “We let people browse and read for free and if they wish they can also buy at a discount,” says Akshaya. They will travel to Mysore, Bengaluru, Goa, Kolhapur, Mumbai, Indore, Jhabua, Kurukshetra, Haryana, Dehradun, Aligarh, Kannauj, Patna, Gaya, Ranchi, Shantiniketan, Kolkata and Kharagpur before returning to Bhubaneshwar.
Chasing their dream also makes them discover that people are not really into reading books. “Only a tiny section of people actually read good English books and even fewer people promote reading,” says Satabdi. The two have taken upon the challenge of exposing more people across the country to new and old authors by taking the bookshop to them.
Satabdi strongly believes, if established books stores are closing shop and people are buying books online, then it is golden moment for smaller independent book stores to come up. Akshaya feels online purchases are very impersonal where you search for the specific title, check the discount and buy.
But, adds Satabdi, a true book lover will always love to feel the book, browse the jacket or cover, fondle it a few times, exchange notes with a fellow book lover and then pick up his/her choice. There is a different pleasure altogether in doing so.
It is Satabdi and Akshaya’s conviction to make people hungry for books. “We cannot think of doing anything else now after seeing the smiles on the faces of thousands of children on the way who saw or read a storybook for the first time,” they say.
There is both, a need and demand for good and valuable books, says Satabdi, who is always at the wheel. People often stare at me in wonder, she says, and I too wonder why people spend so much money on eating out and buying clothes and remain satisfied with just self-help books. “We have to rekindle the joy of reading and rekindle imagination.”
With the fascination for taking their book store closer to people, Satabdi and Akshaya in their own little way are ensuring that books never die.
