Nov 14, 1992. In 22 days, the facade of secularism in India would be brought down, along with a 462- or 463-year-old mosque in Ayodhya. Of course, I didn't know it then. For me, it was simply Children's Day, Chacha Nehru's birthday. It was a Saturday, so we took the 621 from Malai Mandir to Shahjahan Road, alighted outside Dholpur House (which houses the UPSC), walked down the footpath and crossed the C-Hexagon to access a park next to India Gate. Children's Park, home to a toy train and host to the annual Bal Mela. I got a gift from "baba and ma", Classic Tales For Children Book 1, containing "fifteen well-loved tales of the world", illustrated, including Thumbelina, Three Little Pigs, Pied Piper of Hamelin, etc.
Every day, Subrata kaku used to take that same 621 a couple of kilometres beyond India Gate to ITO. His office was in Patriot House (JK Tyres), or next door, in Nehru House (JK Paper). The latter would be neater, since CBT was just two floors below him, next to Dolls Museum. Nine days after the demolition of Babri Masjid, I turned 6. Among the gifts I got at my birthday party were a couple of books, "To Kaushik, from Sukrit", a family friend my age who gifted me two more when I turned 8, and two more when I turned 10; all six, CBT titles. For Bangalees, unrelated Bong elders were assigned Bangla familial terms; non-Bengali elders were aunty and uncle (Chacha Nehru might have been an exception if he were still alive).
Two new phases began in 1993, but both Disney as well as adventure books can be seen as continuations of my fixation with picture books. My first of the former was the first prize for first class, but it might have remained a one-hit wonder had it not been for the Sunday morning Disney show on Doordarshan featuring Ducktales and Talespin and hosted by first Ashish Chaudhary and then Vishal Malhotra. The latter made an entry roughly a month after dadu passed away. Along with it, Galgotias probably got added to the list of CP musts. It was there that my next new phase, a major one at that, started on March 26, 1994. Although I had been gifted one of its comics over the winter vacations from Basant Lok, it was from Galgotias that my first real Famous Five book, a gift "for promotion to class III", was purchased.
CBT, Disney, picture and activity books collided on August 20, 1995, resulting in a then record stash of 4. It was my first Delhi Book Fair, but it wasn't my first book fair at Pragati Maidan. That honour belonged to the previous year's World Book Fair. An annual 9-day affair spanning two weekends (starts on a Saturday, ends next Sunday) since 2012, it was a fortnightly biennale back then (indeed, from 1972 until 2010). Then as now, it was organised by NBT, founded by Nehru in the same year his friend Shankar founded CBT in Nehru House, and now housed in Nehru Bhawan, Vasant Kunj. My only book from my first NBT World Book Fair is a CBT publication.
Memory, which begins somewhere around the next edition, needs to be saved for another post. But before ending this, one last pre-memory. On October 11, 1994, saptami of that year's pujo, I got a book of 90-odd pages containing 22 Panchatantra stories from one of the CR Park pandals. The writing inside tells me that I read 3 of them after coming home that night (CR Park pandal hopping was always a saptami evening affair back then), and the remaining 19 over the course of the next day, in between pandal hopping by bus on astami (our car was still half a decade away). Not bad, if I say so myself.
Key:
Chacha Nehru, Nehru: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
621: bus route number of Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC)
UPSC: Union Public Service Commission
Bal Mela: Nehru Bal Mela (Nehru Children's Fair; since 1963)
ITO: Income Tax Office, refers to 3 nearby traffic intersections (A-point, W-point, Ring Road Crossing)
CBT: Children's Book Trust (estd 1957)
Dolls Museum: Shankar's International Dolls Museum
Galgotias: ED Galgotia & Sons, B-17, Connaught Place (1933-2015)
NBT: National Book Trust (estd 1957)
Shankar: Kesava Shankara Pillai, cartoonist and founder of CBT and Dolls Museum
CR Park: Chittaranjan Park
Pujo: Durga Pujo, a 10-day-long festival; saptami and astami are Days 7 and 8, respectively
Every day, Subrata kaku used to take that same 621 a couple of kilometres beyond India Gate to ITO. His office was in Patriot House (JK Tyres), or next door, in Nehru House (JK Paper). The latter would be neater, since CBT was just two floors below him, next to Dolls Museum. Nine days after the demolition of Babri Masjid, I turned 6. Among the gifts I got at my birthday party were a couple of books, "To Kaushik, from Sukrit", a family friend my age who gifted me two more when I turned 8, and two more when I turned 10; all six, CBT titles. For Bangalees, unrelated Bong elders were assigned Bangla familial terms; non-Bengali elders were aunty and uncle (Chacha Nehru might have been an exception if he were still alive).
Two new phases began in 1993, but both Disney as well as adventure books can be seen as continuations of my fixation with picture books. My first of the former was the first prize for first class, but it might have remained a one-hit wonder had it not been for the Sunday morning Disney show on Doordarshan featuring Ducktales and Talespin and hosted by first Ashish Chaudhary and then Vishal Malhotra. The latter made an entry roughly a month after dadu passed away. Along with it, Galgotias probably got added to the list of CP musts. It was there that my next new phase, a major one at that, started on March 26, 1994. Although I had been gifted one of its comics over the winter vacations from Basant Lok, it was from Galgotias that my first real Famous Five book, a gift "for promotion to class III", was purchased.
CBT, Disney, picture and activity books collided on August 20, 1995, resulting in a then record stash of 4. It was my first Delhi Book Fair, but it wasn't my first book fair at Pragati Maidan. That honour belonged to the previous year's World Book Fair. An annual 9-day affair spanning two weekends (starts on a Saturday, ends next Sunday) since 2012, it was a fortnightly biennale back then (indeed, from 1972 until 2010). Then as now, it was organised by NBT, founded by Nehru in the same year his friend Shankar founded CBT in Nehru House, and now housed in Nehru Bhawan, Vasant Kunj. My only book from my first NBT World Book Fair is a CBT publication.
Memory, which begins somewhere around the next edition, needs to be saved for another post. But before ending this, one last pre-memory. On October 11, 1994, saptami of that year's pujo, I got a book of 90-odd pages containing 22 Panchatantra stories from one of the CR Park pandals. The writing inside tells me that I read 3 of them after coming home that night (CR Park pandal hopping was always a saptami evening affair back then), and the remaining 19 over the course of the next day, in between pandal hopping by bus on astami (our car was still half a decade away). Not bad, if I say so myself.
Key:
Chacha Nehru, Nehru: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
621: bus route number of Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC)
UPSC: Union Public Service Commission
Bal Mela: Nehru Bal Mela (Nehru Children's Fair; since 1963)
ITO: Income Tax Office, refers to 3 nearby traffic intersections (A-point, W-point, Ring Road Crossing)
CBT: Children's Book Trust (estd 1957)
Dolls Museum: Shankar's International Dolls Museum
Galgotias: ED Galgotia & Sons, B-17, Connaught Place (1933-2015)
NBT: National Book Trust (estd 1957)
Shankar: Kesava Shankara Pillai, cartoonist and founder of CBT and Dolls Museum
CR Park: Chittaranjan Park
Pujo: Durga Pujo, a 10-day-long festival; saptami and astami are Days 7 and 8, respectively
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