LAHORE: Hundreds of book lovers thronged the Expo Centre in Johar Town where a five-day book fair “Lahore Bestival” under the theme of “Kitab Dosti Ka Safar” is happening.

It was the third day of the event on Saturday and it would continue until Nov 5. It started when the city was almost completely shut on Thursday and remained open on Friday when all other public events were cancelled due to the protests by a religious party. In other words, the book fair symoblised the resistance that books and writers are supposed to offer against all odds.

Around 110 publishers, importers and sellers are attending the fair and 260 stalls have been set up. Many stalls feature local books in Urdu whereas international titles are also on sale.

The stalls have books on a wide range of topics, including education, fiction, politics, regional and international languages as well as colourful titles and stationery for children. The fair is also showcasing old and rare books, not easily available in the market.

Many writers, poets and intellectuals, including Amjad Islam Amjad, Nasir Abbas Nayyar, Aqeel Abbas Jafri, Hammad Niazi and Ambreen Salahuddin, visited the book fair on Saturday.

Amjad Islam Amjad, who was busy giving autographs to his fans on his books at the stall of Sang-e-Meel, told Dawn the people should promote book reading at their homes, especially among the children.

“I am very happy to see children attending this book fair,” he said.

He added that most of the parents were promoting and preferring English language as a means of education and reading and writing but they should also promote their national language.

“I have seen more number of children and students on the stalls of English language books rather than Urdu and other languages,” he added.

Mr Amjad said we all should find way to promote Urdu because most of the writers in Pakistan were writing in the national language.

Writer Nasir Abbas Nayyar, director general of Urdu Science Board which also has a stall in the fair, expressed surprise at the number of visitors to the fair on Saturday, saying there were no visitor during the last two days of the event due to protests by a religious party. He said they had to close the stall at noon on Friday.

One of the visitors, Haroon Ashraf from Wapda Town, told Dawn he had brought his family, especially minor daughters, to the fair. He said book fairs should be conducted in every area of the city to inculcate reading habits among the children and students.

Another visitor, Batool Hassan, a resident of Cantt, said she had come to the fair with her three daughters. She said most of the children were inclined to use the Internet and other gadgets but they were ignoring book reading. Efforts should be made by the government to promote book reading among the students, Ms Batool added

One of the organisers of the event, Ilm-o-Irfan Publishers owner Gul Fraz Ahmed told Dawn the number of visitors to the fair had increased to thousands on its third day after the end of the protests.

“We have requested the expo centre to first increase time from 10am to 10pm to open the centre for the fair and give us a day or two more to compensate the loss of the publishers,” he added.

Another publisher, Jamaluddin Afghani, said the publishers from different parts of the country were participating in the fair. He said the book reading habits of the country were changing rapidly and the number of books had decreased.

“The trend of printing had decreased from 1,000 copies of book to 300,” he said.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2018