Without a single exception, all stalls were organised painstakingly and all the personnel deserve full credit for the effort. Some vendors demonstrated their skills and expertise in the task by placing books according to genre, language and subject, making it easy for customers and visitors to browse through the stock. It is wonderful to see how all these people know the names and position of all the books in their stock.

As the fair was held in U.P., it was not surprising that several publishers of Hindi literature were present. It is a welcome gesture and provides an opportunity to the public to become familiar and familiarise themselves with the books published in their language. We saw people of all ages from 8 to 80 making rounds of the venue and hopping from one stall to the other. The publishers definitely have an idea which books are in higher demand and accordingly they had kept multiple copies of the same book. On the other hand, one could ascertain the quality of a book and how much demand it commands just by having a look at the number of copies placed in the stalls. One pleasant observation was the stellar position occupied by Srilal Shukla’s Raag Darbhari and Premchand’s masterpiece Godan. Going by numbers, these books have definitely crossed the barriers of time. However, no comparison could be made among these two books on account of the fact that the copyright of Godan has already expired so different versions from different publishers are available, whereas Raag Darbari is as yet published only by Rajkamal Prakashan.