You've been booked!

The Chennai Book Fair is an annual event that is now in its 32nd edition. Since 1977, it has been run by the BAPASI - the Booksellers And Publishers Association of South India. In its first year, it was held in December and somewhere down the road, the fair was shifted to the Jan/Feb time frame, because December was almost exclusively given over to the 'music season'. Over the past few years, the number of visitors to the fair has exploded; in 1977, there were 22 stalls - 20 for English and 2 for Tamizh - and about 27,000 people visited them. In its 32nd year, there are about 600 stalls -the majority of them Tamizh publishers - and BAPASI expects about a million visitors during the ten days of the fair.

Maybe it is the effect of the global meltdown and the Satyam imbroglio; the number of computer or IT related titles seems to have dropped drastically. And yet, there are about 500,000 titles on display, not including the non-book stuff like audiobooks, CDs, etc. which are also available. The crowd of course is fairly thick, which means one cannot dart from side to side unlike the chamois of the Alps (to paraphrase Wodehouse), but must be content to go with the flow. But that's something the Chennai book lover has learnt to live with at the book fair over the past three or four years; folks these days do multiple trips - surely no one can browse through 600 stalls in just a day or two.

Seeing all this, the National Book Trust (NBT) must be chafing at its lack of staying power. The NBT does run the largest book fair in the country, the New Delhi World Book Fair (last year's show had 23 countries, over 2500 stalls and over 1.5 million titles on display), but they must be miffed at not having stayed the course at Chennai, after organizing the first ever Book Fair in Madras as early as 1970!

Complex toys

Imagine what that block of wood, plastic or rubber would do. Then go ahead and move that block to get it done. That's what the first toys were like. The form the wooden block would take was limited only by the child's imagination. If an adult did not quite see it that way, it is only to be expected. "Grown-ups don't understand", as The Little Prince said. The grown-ups, though began to seek their revenge and impose their understanding, when they began to make the toys more 'realistic': now a battery powered radio controlled model of a P51 Mustang could only be a battery-powered-radio-controlled-model-of-a-P51-Mustang and nothing else.

Which is why this whole business of LEGO Education's toys seems to be a very good thing. In the first place, it gives a lot of control back to the child. In the second place, it keeps the adults off the child, for now the child says 'you don't understand', and the grown-up has to keep quiet, because it is true for most part! In the case of their Mindstorms line of products it is especially true, because they are LEGO blocks powered with software; with 4 different kinds of sensors, they can be built and programmed to carry out different tasks. There was a show last week, where a set of companies associated with robotics education was trying to show how such (and other similar types of) toys could be used to develop kids' interest in robotics.

That may be, but at the show, most of the interest was centred on these bots , one trying to move on the black line and the other trying to knock of the red ball. Robotics or no robotics, the kids had fun with the toys!

New York, New York

I really didn't have too many excuses to not visit The Landmarks of New York. My best excuse was trumped when these landmarks came to Chennai; and they came so close to where I work, that I could not miss them even if I wanted to. There were about 80 of these landmarks, all in black and white, framed, with descriptions on the cultural, historic or architectural significance of these. All of them were photos taken by Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, who was at one time chairperson of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Foundation.

The photographs themselves were excellent, but what was more impressive was the idea of a 'Landmarks Law'. In essence, a building that's over 30 years qualifies to be a landmark, if it can be demonstrated that it has a lasting cultural, aesthetic or historic value, is declared a landmark and protected from demolition. All the while, the owners of such buildings can continue to use and maintain their properties. Today the New York City Landmarks Law covers not only buildings, but also signs, neighbourhoods and public use land.

Maybe the existence of such legislation could have deterred the state Public Works Department from demolishing the 250 year old Government House last month. The demolition went ahead with only a few protests, mainly because the building was set back inside the Omandur estate, shielded from public view. There are many more such vulnerable structures in Chennai, that could well do with the protection provided by a 'Landmarks Law'!