JOIN USTwo kinds of book lovers were recognisable at the Harper Collins warehouse sale which recently took place. One were those who pushed across the crowd of thousands to lay their hands on the well-stocked books first and left everyone behind, and the others who after seeing the scenario booked a cab back home.
Twenty-year-old, Prakriti Saxena got 60 books from the sale for Rs 1, 500. She came at 7 am from Model Town to Faridabad for the sale which reportedly started after 12.
“A warehouse sale is good for getting books to fill my book shelf at home. Most of the books are useless. I wanted The Game of Thrones but they were sold,” she says.
Saxena got some lesser-known books like, Forged in Crisis: India and the United States Since 1947 and an atlas which were the best she could lay her hand on. These are originally worth Rs 699 but she got them for Rs 50 and 100 respectively.
Saxena has never been to a sale like this before, however she says that she will never come back. There was a slight stampede in the morning, she said when asked about the mood of the place.
Many people said the same thing, as most of them were unable to get inside the warehouse and were standing outside. The terribly-mismanaged event sheds light on the uncultivated culture of reading amongst the masses. When the event was uploaded on Facebook it was a momentous occasion for many book lovers. They expected it to be something like a “book fair” where you can look around for the best of the lot.
But on day one, book lovers from the age five to 50 tried to grand slam the warehouse. Police had to be called in to control the situation. And day two got cancelled because of “overwhelming response”.
Certain book lovers felt that they were “unable” to push through the crowd. “It was “embarrassing” to act like that. I didn’t feel so enterprising to push people to get my way in. Any well read person will not act in this way,” says Purba Moitra, who waited
for two and a half hours and left.
“What’s the point of travelling all the way there waiting in the heat for two hours and then coming back with The Game of Thrones? So better go to libraries or just Daryaganj, if you want cheap books,” she adds.
People did find many books though, including Fahrenheit 451, The Hobbit and such. But people who forced themselves inside said that 70 per cent of the books were “love stories”, like Did I Mention I Love You, Love is a Thief’ and The Winter King by lesser-known authors. Books about enlightenment followed the love stories collection in numbers. But people bought their way out anyway.
On day two when the cancellation of the event was declared on social media, Seher Kaur Malik sarcastically posted on the Facebook event’s page, “Thanks for informing us about the event shutting down for today, because I’m so active on Twitter! Here I was thinking ‘holy wow, I’ll save so much money and buy books to my heart’s content!’ But no, I just ended up wasting my money away on a cab, took a leave from work, convinced a friend of its brilliance and disappointed her. Destroyed my entire morning driving from Noida to go inside this weird broken lane to see two guards holding a cardboard sign that the sale
is shut.”