The day's end has pushed a sense of urgency into me. So I thought I should blog. It will calm me down, and, though not change the temporal nature of things, but will afford me some mental space to both accomodate, as well as stretch related thoughts - the play dough - into new shapes. Urgent things make me feel confrontational, and being a pacifist, waving the peace sign and all, confrontations impulsively feel wrong ("confrontations are bad, m'kay?"). Feeling wrong, the only affordance is to feel even more of so.
Affordances remind me of the day that went by. I went to the World Book Fair, something that I find myself visiting year after year, as if I were the biggest book nerd out there, when in reality I return with a bagful of brochures and peeves.
I went nuts seeing this on the shelves (Simon & Schuster).
My number one peeve with the Fair is the fair itself. Too many people in too little space. Bodies bumping, brushing and bruising against each other. Somebody always there to burp or fart within an arm's distance. Broken toes for sandal-men like moi. The human body offers some ambiguous affordance, especially one that isn't ours, which we assume to be pliable and yielding.
This being India, I would be mocked for my sentiment, since we have the phenomenon of religion, which attracts discomfort as if that was the redeeming part of the experience. Hordes throng to temples during the big festivals, chanting and pushing. Armies march through the alleys of old Delhi during Muharram, bleeding and singing. There isn't an inch of space to move; the only people expert at deftly moving through the crowds being the pickpocket gangs. Despite all that, you see really happy people. [wonder how much business physicians and policemen get in the aftermath] Let's not digress.
An additional feature of this Book Fair, which is uncharacteristically taking place in Feb, was the equation of jackets - everybody had one on as they came in, and through the stalls you would find sweaty people walking in discomfort, ultimately giving in to the urge to take theirs off, dead baggage in hands, and then, later fumbling with putting it back on again soon as they stepped out. Being weather-agnostic, I managed fine in a shirt, and didn't have to go through the experience of this particular observation (yes, I don't empathize, but sympathize, on this occasion, which is rarity since clumsy misfortunes are my thing).
Peeves apart, there were only a coupla stalls I enjoyed. One was Roli, which was selling books , and the other a hobby store, which was selling anything but books. The former is doing some creative/innovative stuff (see: CMYK bookstore), but it was the latter that managed to get some currency outta my pocket - creative stuff is hard to sell, hobbies aren't.
Among the books, there was something else - I found myself toying with monoculars, binoculars, magnifying glasses, compasses, and other things that I imagine would save lives on one of the days in the coming coupla' months filled with high-energy adventures and misadventures. Now I have a list of items - totaling more than any books could've - to order through that hobby store. To convey cool, I got baby brother a counter, the exact one as in the
Axe commercial to keep "score" - wtf moment on realizing that in India it's being marketed as a "pooja/mantra/rudraksh-counting" aid.
Either side of the Book Fair were spent at Mandi House. Tried Triveni Art Gallery's rooftop tea cafe, which was a bland and uninspiring affair that neither me nor Ghoru are gonna be reminiscing. The nukkad-wale stalls seemed to offer better fare, which we should check out next time, or maybe after we're done with the adjacent Bengali market which has been recommended often.
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