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Punjab: Growing trend of reading Coffee Table books |
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Written by Ashwini Ahuja, Mynews.In
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Monday, 07 January 2008 |
 It’s a remarkable change everywhere in Punjab. Punjabis are these days extraordinarily growing culture conscious. They now spare time from their busy schedules to read about their culture, glorious Sikh history, heritage and art. And coffee table books are their favourite. Quite true, a new trend of reading coffee table books in Punjabi families is greater than ever. Book stalls in Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Amritsar are flooded with coffee table books and sale of such books are on steep rise.
With the popularity of Amritsar based writer Manveen Sandhu’s book- “Maharaja Ranjeet Singh- personalities extraordinaire” the new trend of writing coffee table books on Punjab, its culture, its pristine history and arts is in the pipeline.
Mohinder Singh and Sondeep Singh recently launched a Punjab Heritage Series- an interesting collection of coffee table books carrying the interesting tales of historical towns, Sikh shrines, Sikh gurus, forts etc and these are selling well; although not like hot cakes. Generally, a coffee table book is costly and out of reach of common readers but this series is comparatively priced lower.
Why coffee table books are popular in Punjab. The people of Punjab who are short of time for books and its reading are now really tending to reading book; Kapila, a student of M. Phil at Chandigarh and a novice reader of coffee table book series comments that the soaring sale of coffee table books in big cities of Punjab has nothing to do with the growing ‘reading habit’ of Punjabis.
To buy coffee table book is a status symbol more than its reading, today. She further opines that it is a fashion now like buying furniture or upholstery. We buy furniture to decorate our homes and coffee table book is also a part of beautification of our homes but she accepts that people are somewhat growing culture conscious thanks to the publication of coffee table books.
Coffee table is a book, which rests on coffee table in the middle of the any home for guests or visitors to inspire conversation or alleviating their boredom. No doubt, guests entertain the books because it is quite different from daily newspaper or weekly magazines, which sophisticated, educated families of Punjabis serve to guests for their kill-the-time reading.
The dilemma with these coffee table books is that they are much costly. On being asked about its sale, a book seller at sector 17, Chandigarh optimistically says that, yes, its sale is pretty good but these attract mostly NRI families and readers from upper middle class because they send the coffee table book to their foreign friends and relatives migrated to USA, UK, Switzerland, Canada etc. He further regrets readers from lower paying capacity don’t find their access to such books. Common readers read the books at public libraries if they find there, anyway.
What is about the coffee table books which attracts NRIs and upper middle class families, Shiv Shanker, a government school teacher at surrounding Chandigarh explains, its heavy construction, hard cover and visually orientation, its elegantly beautiful photographs and illustrations with texts in different colours.
Generally, coffee table books are confined to non-fiction but poetry is not prohibited if a writer depicts the poetry with colourful images. Children too love to read these books. The colourful pictures are like toys of words for kids.
If we peep into the history of these kinds of books, it was the year of 1960, when the first book of such type namely-“This is the American earth” had come into existence from America. Mr. Ansel Adam had shot the photographs for this book and Nancy Newhall had written the text for the book. It was not the single book rather a series of twenty titles.
In Punjab, it’s a new trend because of Punjabi Diaspora but is becoming popular day by day. Because of its towering popularity, the veteran writer like Khushwant Singh too attracted towards writing the text of “The Sikhs- a most famous coffee table book which is now available at market.
Generally, most coffee table books contain the pictures of festivals and melas of Punjab, Sikh functions in different localities with texts. In some of the photographs, people who converted to Sikhism from other religion are also shown. Some books depict the story of Harmandir Sahib in its own style. Such books are growing popular rapidly.
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