Reader's Paradise: A Day in Daryaganj, New Delhi

Walking the wisp of a footpath on that crowded Sunday morning, tonight I can still remember what it felt like to be there. A week before we left our homes for Chandbagh, I still roamed the galis and metros of Delhi, enjoying the company of my cousins (all of them a decade elder to me mind you) when cousin brother Keshav introduced me to Daryaganj. Having missed the opportunity the previous Sunday, I kept my last weekend in the capital free for my first experience of the Sunday Book Market in Daryaganj. Arriving mid-morning, I followed Keshav bhaiya around, intoxicated by the avalanche of paperbacks that ambushed my eyes. Willpower abandoned and desire consummate, we explored every bookshop and path-peddler we saw (I say ‘we’ but how could you expect me to resist!). Lost as I am, overjoyed I was more, for they sold paperbacks by the kilogram! Oh, the wondrous ideas I was struck with. Unfortunately stuck with a meagre sum (for books at least, I care not for the rest) I would like to say I bought some. An edition of Orwell’s 1984 aged thirty years, I need not say more. Torn and worn (for good titles, a sign of adoration of highest quality) after nearly seventy years from hand to hand, Anton Chekhov’s ‘Three Plays’ made its way into mine. 

We wandered and scrutinised bookshelves while skirting around selfie-takers and lovers searching for the tepid but bestselling Ravinder Singh rom-coms. At one point, I was left disbelieving as IB and IGCSE textbooks of the Oxford and Cambridge University Press sold at a grand a copy! Keshav (in his wittingly creative mind, bless his heart) thought to introduce me to one of his coveted corner shops, a little ways inside an inlet of a gali. There I marvelled at encyclopaedias and voluminous histories, and by happy accident discovered a copy of ‘Tamas’ translated by Bhisham Sahni himself (for all those now struck by envy beware / for libraries over life forever I believe / and thoughts of disappearing books / syren spells of raging retribution I weave). 

As we left with heavy bags and heavy hearts, I did not know that it would be the only weekend I would get to see the fair in its glory. A different world exists in those lanes when first you notice kindred spirits touching delicate spines with such reverence to behold. To catch such lovely scents emanating from bound stories (for all those who cannot understand, enjoy the psychosexual imagery). Daryaganj, as of 5th July 2019, was a world that claimed me in the heart of its time. Daryaganj, as of 5th August, was stripped of a fifty-year legacy of a reader’s paradise, for its path-peddlers and stalls, while adored, were impediments to some. As someone who was a visitor and that also for the first and now the last time, hollow yet happiness is what fills me. I am honoured to say that I walked amongst towers of leaning and constantly changing paperbacks that have populated Daryaganj since before a time my parents took their first steps.  For a memory beyond replication and senses beyond storytelling, here is to the lanes of literature that I, like my mother, like Keshav, like every other reader in the know, drove us to love literature in a new light.