Joy Words Club

Lit fests are defined by their audience. Organisers, speakers, curators are all replaceable but not the readers, not the audience

- Shinie Antony

IS reading obsolete, has it become a quaint cute act our ancestors used to indulge in? Everyone is writing a book but is anyone reading them? Some fear books are in danger of ending up as a drawing room decoration, a must décor; a vase filled with flowers and a shelf full of books slanted prettily in a row where they best catch the light. The red spines merge into brown ones and then on to blue, ending with cream and white. Good to take a selfie against.

There was a time when boasting about the books you read was a thing; now we boast about the books we are not going to read because we don't have the time. Our life is too hectic and happening to pretend to have read a book we didn't and never will. Indians are the opposite of Japanese in this regard. Tsundoku is the art of collecting books for the pleasure of reading them later in Japan; here we call it raddi.

Into this disenchantment with the printed word came a new genre called lit fests, which helps the average shy 'I don't have time to read' Indian to forge a tentative relationship with bestsellers and classics. Literature festivals make books appear harmless, even painless. No one is judging you by the number of books you haven't read, as long as you are nodding your head or shaking it as the author speaks on stage. Against your will you get involved. Into the written word via the spoken one.