It’s a nippy December morning and the Hauz Khas ruins are witness to a small gathering. Over a dozen people are there with paperbacks, diaries, Macbooks on laps, sitting on the damp grass. The incessant chatter of the parakeets isn’t a bother, these poetry lovers are discussing magic realism, the Romantic poets, Alexander Pope, Ghalib. A young poet recites an ode to the dead children of Peshawar, another a love song to his muse. It’s past noon and members of the Poetry Club are still trickling in. It’s one of the many book clubs blooming in the city and nationwide. In the national capital area, if you live in the Gurgaon area you can hang out with the Mums At Work book club, in Chennai there’s the Madras Book Club. And it takes in all kinds, if there’s an all-women’s book club in Chandigarh, then a Queer Book Club is active in Mumbai. The basic ritual, however, is the same: a small group gets together every few weeks to discuss pre-assigned titles.
And it’s not just a metro happening. The Lucknow Book Club led by Dr Manoj Singh (popularly known as Docsaab) has almost 6,400 members. A meeting is organised on every fourth Sunday of the month. The seven-year-old group conducts live-streamed discussions on motley topics like Gandhian literature, art, science fiction, classics and the paranormal. There’s always a gathering of 40-50 book lovers with the locations continuing to change—it could be a public park, classroom, art gallery, even a cafe. Local authors frequently flock the place and the club holds book launches too like the one for Indo-Jewish author Sheila Rohekar’s Miss Samuel: Ek Yahudi Gatha. “The basic aim is sharing and getting to know about new books and authors at every meeting. Interestingly, the last meeting introduced me to The Catcher in the Rye,” says Manoj. “Reading is, by nature, a solitary activity. But it’s also something we value discussing,” he adds. A book group then is a great way to meet people, make friends and read with them books that have been sitting untouched on the shelves. No wonder booksellers, who have otherwise been hit by the online shopping boom, are thankful to book clubs for boosting sales. “We feel really good when regular customers inform us in advance about the demand for 10-15 specific books for their book club discussions. It does enhances our sales,” says Mithilesh Singh, manager at Bahrisons Booksellers, Khan Market.
Book clubs also come in various niche shades. Drawn to discussions on political happenings, capitalism, human rights? For the debating heads, Bangalore’s Politically Inspired Book Club is the place to be. Brainchild of software professional Arvind Batra, the 8-10 members select a book “democratically” on different radical thinkers and discuss it threadbare. Topics and books could go from Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and The Secret History Behind Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang to Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night and Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi. “Of course, there are heated debates but that’s also all about breaking the ice. Political discussions cannot be controlled as they are very engaging,” says Batra.
Meanwhile, in Goa, at The Third Thursday Goa Book Club (no they don’t stay true to their name!), discussions are strictly limited to Goan writers like Jerry Pinto, George Menezes, Savia Viegas, Ben Antao, Ramesh Veluskar etc. Started by journalist Fredrick F.N. Noronha, the sole objective is to promote the local writing that Noronha believes is still a “virgin field”. Touching on old books, local literature, reviving long-lasting friendships and “an excuse to know others” is what the club is all about, says Noronha. A cocktail of people, professors, housewives, students, musicians, even comedians attend discussions with local authors who also come to promote their books. (Not surprisingly, book clubs have become a new mecca for debut authors keen to promote their books, the hope being that at least some of the attendees might further publicise the work on social media.) Writer Satyarth Nayak feels book clubs are a good trend—apart from encouraging debut authors, they also help brief aspiring writers on how to get published.
Some book clubs also follow unusual methods to promote reading as a constructive activity. For instance, the Book Exchange Club of Mumbai believes in the concept of ‘give one, take one book’. People who get too abrasive during discussions are calmly given a bookmark to make them realise they are wandering from the topic. Founder Deepak Gupta says a lot of the members have become great friends over the years and they have gone on to start their own book clubs. The Reading Raccoon offers to pick up the best books for children and engage them in reading more but is mostly restricted to an online forum since a large number of parents look for sessions which are more result-oriented. But isn’t an online book club a paradox? Tanushree, psychology lecturer and founder of The Reading Raccoon, herself feels that offline book clubs are any day better than online ones. At times your child cultivates reading habits by seeing other kids read, she says.
Among all this, the downside has been that the “mortality rate” of book clubs is also quite high. M. Venkatesh, founder of Bookaroo, says most clubs start with much enthusiasm but at the end of the day nobody wants to pay for a book club membership. Another crib is that most people who attend are more interested in the food served. To each, his own taste.
