Instead of going to classes to attend lectures, go to the
Sunday market, Darya Ganj, and you won’t come out for twenty years, if you
really wish to learn. The Sunday book market at Daryaganj is one of its kind in
Asia since 40 years of confluence and incorporate more than 220 book stalls.
Throughout many stages of formal education, a person may spend
many, many hours in this market. For some it is the court of last resort.
The current definitive answer to almost any subject can be found in this
market. Right from children caricatures “chacha chawdhary” to the spiritual
otherworldly Osho, each and every book can be found in this erudite lane
within your means.
You
have everything from fiction to medical sciences, architecture to cookery
books, comics to atlases, fiction to computers, classics to magazines,
management to hobbies. You name it and this place has it. It is hard to
classify the books here in a specific order, but a patient search will
certainly yield in what you are looking for. Mostly books are second
hand and it at as a helping hand for the people who can’t buy most of the books
due to their heavy weigh prices. We can say that this book is a paradise for
the needy people and is a seventh heaven for the book lovers.
Today after so many centuries,
Daryaganj is still a market but now, an over populated busy and congested one.
Now, it has the office of some of the most well known distributors, publication
houses and organizations of the country, apart from the good Indian restaurants
and shops selling different kinds of books. Near Daryaganj’s Golcha cinema, the
bazaar is the only source of income for many of its 220 pavement booksellers.
The market, covering a one-kilometer stretch,
never had the official permission to run. But nonetheless, the hawkers had been
allowed to sit there every Sunday. As always, authorization
of the market is a messy question. On the one hand, the market is quite
established and its struggle for existence and recognition seems to be long
over, but on the other, each hawker pays some token of money in the form of
“hafta”.
From students to artists to designers
to theorists to activists – Daryaganj is the favorite place to be on a Sunday.
Life begins at 7am every Sunday, over the decades for its thriving old book bazaar.
This bazaar is a paradise for book lovers all over
Delhi and beyond, as a mind-boggling variety of rare books are usually
available in this market at very affordable prices. But the clouds of
authorities are still rising on the heads of these street hawkers. For some customers it is a next world and
for 250 hawkers who have a stockpile of books in the godown, the future
definitely looks uncertain.
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Nearest Metro Station : Pragati Maidan , Kashmere Gate , Chawri Bazar
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