Selective Amnesia

A family reunion at the book fair

Many words have been written about the 28th Annual Book Fair in Chennai. People, including me, have written about the books, the people and the bloggers in the book fair. But how many have actually written about the book fair’s greatest benefit – family reunions?

I have been going to the book fair, everyday, for about 5 days now. Every time I walk in, I not only buy a book, I also meet a member of my family.

The most important one in that long list of people I met is my great grand-father, who died in the year 1906. My great grandfather apparently took off after me. He too was a writer. And pretty good at that. He has written over 20 original books in his short life, and translated a good number of English books into Tamil, most notably, the works of Shakespeare.

The day before yesterday, I bought up two of his books – one a collection of folklore – called “Tales of the Sun – Folklore of South India” and the other, a small guide to Indian festivals called “Hindu Fasts, feasts and festivals”. The best part of the second book is a small chapter at the end that calculates the length of the “Kaliyuga”.