Book clubs are in these days in Bhubaneswar. Book lovers enjoy being a part of these clubs, where groups of people meet and discuss books they have read. The clubs provide interesting reading material and innovate ways to make reading sessions enjoyable. New books are also released here and the readers get an opportunity to interact with authors.
The city has now come up with an innovative way to encourage book reading by organising events where the reader listens to the experiences of a celebrity. City-based Bakul Foundation in association with Bhubaneswar Development Authority plans to organise BhuFeSto (Bhubaneswar Festival of International Storytelling) featuring storytellers and folk musicians from the participating nations during World Cup Hockey 2018 to be hosted by Bhubaneswar from December 6.
The venues for the four-day event will be Buddha Jayanti Park in Chandrasekharpur, IG Park City Centre and Kalabhoomi or Madhusudan Park in Pokhariput.
According to Sujit Mohapatra of Bakul Foundation, people usually just focus on buying and reading a book. But when you read a book aloud at a club or gathering, it becomes a potent tool for developing imagination, inspiring and educating children and adults alike. “Once, the children understand the power of stories, they will look for nourishment in story books. There is a direct link between storytelling and developing a reading habit. In both the cases, you not only listen or read but also end up visualising the scene.”
“Around 20 storytellers and folk musicians including six from Australia, South Africa, Netherlands, Argentina and Malaysia will participate in the BhuFeSto event. It will be an opportunity for children to learn something new,” says Sujit.
He continues: “For the book reading sessions at the book clubs, we bring writers to discuss their books. We sometimes bring personalities who share their experiences with the audience which is similar to reading from books. Recently, we invited Arun Bothra, who was in the news for cracking the Patnagarh Parcel Bomb Case, to tell us about the crime investigation and his days with CBI and CID. The event attracted a huge crowd.
“By organising reading sessions, we encourage the book reading culture and this helps in exchange of ideas,” Sujit says, adding that a special section of books on the army was launched for kids. During the launch, General KPD Samanta and General Chinu Mahanti shared their stories.
Bijaya Biswal of Bhubaneswar Poetry Club, who recently organised the city’s first ‘human library’, said schools and colleges have a major role in developing book clubs. A revival of the school and college library culture will create a platform for people to borrow books to read, meet each other to discuss books and interpret them. Book clubs need to come up because libraries and bookstores are dying. The revival of libraries requires reformation of various related institutional structures in the country. Hence, all cultural organisations in the city should take the initiative to conduct reading programmes so that children get to learn from their social environment, she said.
“The motive behind organising the ‘Human library’ event was to provide a unique platform for communicating opinions about certain realities that we find difficult to address or talk about. In a ‘human library’ event, renowned personalities share their experiences with the audience which is similar to reading from books,” she said.
In the last book reading session organised ahead of the Bhubaneswar Pride Parade of the LGBTQ community, the theme was Queer Literature. “The books read during the session were by western authors such as Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Anne Frank, and Virginia Woolf. There were also readings on Hindu mythology and Sufi poetry. Indian writers such as Agha Shahid Ali, Anjum Hasan and Kamala Das were discussed and issues such as sexuality and gender were debated. Around 20-25 people attend the sessions every time,” she said.
“In the Internet era, the scope of discussions has decreased. Since information is available at the click of a mouse, it’s easy for people to be influenced by fake news as they may not research its authenticity,” she added.
Akshaya Ravtray of Walking Book Fairs said book clubs are the perfect way to keep reading, talk about what you’re reading, and make friends with other readers. “You don’t have to pay fees to join our book club. This is a place where we meet other book lovers, read books together, talk and exchange ideas and try to understand the world around us. About 10-15 booklovers from all walks of life join us every month at our club. We discuss all kinds of books, classics, fiction, poetry, literature and non-fiction from around the world and also books by local writers.”
Akshaya and his business partner Satabdi Mishra had travelled 25,000 km and 20 states including all the districts of the state by road in their mini-van till now, taking books with them on a “mission” to promote book reading in towns and villages because they believed “more Indians need to read books.”
He added: “Bookstores and libraries are important democratic spaces in any society. They function as community spaces where members gather to think, debate and grow together. Recently, we held a discussion on Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s The Adivasi Will Not Dance and Baburao Bagul’s Jevha Mi Jaat Chorli Hoti which revolutionised Indian literature. We provide discounts to make books affordable and accessible to more people and to cultivate a reading habit among people. We recently launched a campaign, 100 Bookshops Not Enough, in collaboration with Pan Macmillan India to promote book buying from bookshops.
“We bring authors to book reading sessions. We invited Rajesh Patil, the CEO of Skilled in Odisha, who talked about his journey from a Maharashtra village to become a collector. He read from his book Maa I Have Become a Collector, originally written in Marathi and now translated into Odia, English and Hindi. Sometimes musical and DJ sessions are organised to make the book reading sessions more interesting,” she said.
As the member of a book club, Akansha Nayak, a bibliophile, has learned to discuss books she has read. Recently, she started reading the novel Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini. It is a short, poignant, illustrated book on the refugee crisis and written in the form of a father’s letter to his son on the eve of their journey. Watching his son sleep, the author reflects on the dangerous sea-crossing that lies before them. It is a vivid portrayal of their life in Homs, Syria, before the war and how their city transformed into a deadly war zone. Such books open up new ways of looking at the world, she said.
Gaurav Mohanty, who is also a member of a book club, said books are our best friends; they never expect anything from us, but give us wisdom and pleasure. Currently, he is reading the book Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from Around the World by Mineke Schipper which provides revealing insights into the plight of women across the centuries.
ARINDAM GANGULY, OP