** The concept of Book Fairs is just so amazin . They are a gift straight from heaven to all the bibliophiles, they play a vital role in promoting the habit of reading among people of all ages.**
** Delhi Book Fair plays a pivotal role in reiterating the might of the pen and the printed world.**
** I have attended each and every World Book Fair held in Pragati Maidan for as far as I can remember. It has become more of a tradition for me to attend the fair at least once whenever it is held. I remember saving up all the money I procured from my parents or relatives as a child and saved them all in the months preceding the book fair to have a good sum of money to buy all the books I could in the fair, and the best thing about the fair was that it allowed me to buy a large number of books in a limited sum of money. There used to be stores selling books in amazing deals like 3 books for 100 Rs-200 Rs and shops selling books at the rate of per kilo.**
This Year I visited the Book Fair with my buddy from school. It was a very impromptu plan and we ended up having the best time. We met at Botanical Garden Metro station, Noida, and left for Pragati Maidan to visit the bibliophile heaven. There were several stores in the fair and bookworms from all around who had come to stock up their libraries for the year. We even saw two girls who had literally brought two empty suitcases to fill up with all the books they were going to buy at the fair.
My friend and I had a butt load of fun. As we all know how the Gen Z generation particularly in Delhi NCR is so particular about their outfits and wardrobe choices nowadays while going for day outs that they are very vigilant about keeping up with the latest trend in the market. Gauri and I spotted so many suckers for aestheticism students that we made a fun little game to count all the Tote Bags and Bucket hats we spotted during the fair. We had a blast spotting them during the fair. We spotted so many Tote Bags and Bucket Hats in the fair that we ended up losing count, but believe me, it was a whole lot more than you I would expect.
Another really funny thing that happened was that we met award-winning author Akshat Gupta who penned the trilogy of the book 'The Hidden Hindu' and didn't even realize it. He recommended us his book in one of the stalls and my friend convinced by the way he spoke bought the first two parts of the trilogy for a light read. We realized who we had just met after we came home and saw his podcast on beer biceps. Only if we had known who he was, we would have made sure to at least take a selfie. Well, no point regretting something in the past.
The Book Fair this year was pretty exclusive and had a limited number of stalls compared to how grand it used to be pre covid. But nonetheless, we had a great time and bought 2 books each.