Historically, Gujarati has not commanded a strong reading public or a robust reading culture, the way Bangla did, for instance, which is reflected not only in the inadequacy of required infrastructure but also in public attitudes towards the idea of investing in books. While many respondents in the all-India study could be keen book lovers, whether the lockdown had triggered a similar response in Gujarat, a state well-known for its mercantile ethos, should be a subject of careful enquiry. On the brighter side, the Nielsen study discovered a palpable increase in the consumption of books and weekly reading diet of readers during and around the lockdown. For a locked-down book consumer, the most preferred way was to buy online, next came physical stores and home delivery of books was the last resort.Īdd to this the “social” distancing of readers from institutions (schools, colleges and public/private libraries) that, in addition to the trove of books, offer silence, space, and a reading experience, and what you get is a dystopian scenario in the publishing world, made more real by the terrifying second wave of the pandemic. His behaviour finds official confirmation in the findings of Nielsen Book India’s survey, according to which COVID-19 brought about gradational shift in the reader’s preferred modes of purchasing books.
This friend of mine, like many of the old-school readers, related to a book in terms of its tactile and olfactory features, something he would be scared to indulge in now even after the quarantine period. This physical distancing of a book from its reader metaphorically summed up for me the crisis the publishing industry was undergoing on account of the most mercurial and macabre pandemic. He said he had put the envelope in a three-day mandatory quarantine and not touched it so far. That long silence of someone whom I had known to be a voracious reader, one who would stay up all night to finish a book, clearly intrigued me, so much so that I could not help enquiring with him on phone. In 2020, as India began to unlock after four phases of nationwide lockdown, I sent a copy of my Gujarati translation of Arun Kolatkar’s Kala Ghoda Poems to a bibliophile friend and waited for three days, after the courier service confirmed the delivery, to hear from him.
Cheap mobile plans may soon become a thing of the past in India.Watch: Heavy rainfall returns to Chennai after a brief respite, leading to waterlogged streets again.‘Dil Bekaraar’ review: Romance and frivolity in 1980s India.Covid: 182 fully vaccinated students of Karnataka medical college test positive.What I learned by rehabilitating the world’s smallest wild cat near Pune.Watch: Old man lights up the mood on the street with his cheerful dance with Instagrammer.News regulator asks Times Now to take down show calling activist Teesta Setalvad a ‘Modi baiter’.‘I showed him what a successful acting career looks like’: Priyanka Chopra roasts husband Nick Jonas.In China, ‘leftover women’ are using money power to fight the stigma of being single.
0 kommentar(er)
