Treat for bibliophiles: Pune Book Festival, a 'giant community library' promoting reading habit

Pune, Dec 12 (PTI) When the gates of Pune's nearly 140-year-old Fergusson College ground swing open this Saturday, they will welcome not just crowds but a festival that has carved a special place in the city's rich cultural calendar - the Pune Book Festival.

Over the past three years, the Pune Book Festival has grown to be very popular and influential with the organisers now claiming that it is now counted among India's largest literary gatherings after Delhi's World Book Fair.

What began as a modest proposal floated during the G20 Education Working Group meeting in the city in 2023 has virtually transformed into a cultural movement. Today, the Pune Book Festival has become a kind of pilgrimage for readers across ages, languages and reading habits.

Convener of the festival, Rajesh Pande, attending the G20 meeting, pitched Pune as a natural home for a large public-facing book event. The idea resonated with the National Book Trust (NBT), the Education Ministry's autonomous publishing body.

Col Yuvraj Malik, NBT Director took the idea forward and built a model rooted in participation.

"That philosophical shift - 'from a book exhibition' to a 'festival by the people' may have been the turning point," Pande told PTI.

"The festival draws inspiration from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision for promoting reading," he said.

In 2023, the festival's maiden year, 200 stalls were put up and around four lakh people visited it, while the second year witnessed 600 stalls and 8.5 lakh visitors.

This year, the scale of the event, which will be inaugurated on Saturday, will be grander with 900 stalls, including 800 dedicated purely to books. Given the addition of more innovative events this year, we expect 12.5 lakh visitors and sales crossing Rs 100 crore - numbers rarely seen outside Delhi's mammoth fair, Pande said.

But numbers alone don't tell the story. What Pune has revived is an experience and a reading culture. Walk through the aisles and the festival feels like a living, breathing library - toddlers carrying picture books bigger than their torsos, college students arguing over contemporary fiction, elderly readers hunting for out-of-print classics, entire families strolling with overflowing tote bags.

Publishers say Pune behaves like no other Indian city.

"People don't browse casually. They come to buy," one organiser said.

Many visitors treat the nine-day event like a day-long outing - books in the morning, performances in the afternoon, workshops in the evening. Schools schedule field trips and colleges send entire departments.

In 2023, the festival entered the Guinness World Records when 3,066 parents read aloud to their children simultaneously, surpassing China's previous record.

Last year's 25 theatrical, musical and dance performances drew over two lakh spectators. This year's guests include Booker Prize winner Banu Mushtaq, documentary filmmaker Siddhartha Kak, astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, and Grammy Award winner Ricky Kej.

"Over 100 book launches are scheduled, with a bustling Children's Corner offering competitions, storytelling sessions and writing workshops," Pande said, adding that over 100 speakers are going to take part in the week-long literary treat.

Speaking about how the Pune Book Festival has given a hope to the publishing industry, Pande said, "Independent bookstores, translations and children's literature - all of which once flourished - were hit by rising production costs and the pandemic. The slowdown also dimmed the once-dependable Diwali Ank market and weakened returns at the All India Marathi Literary Meet." "Amid this downturn, the Pune Book Festival has emerged - almost unexpectedly - as a stabilising force for the sector," Pande said. PTI SPK NP