Oh! The Smell of a Book!

The charm of purchasing new books and then getting the whiff of the crisp pages, is dying a slow death in the age of technology. Everything you want to read is either available online or you are so busy with social media that you no longer have the habit of reading. Abhivyakti, an initiative started a year ago by Vinay Varma, theatre artiste  from the city, addresses just the same.

Abhivyakti is a story reading session, where Vinay narrates the story to his audience with great finesse. “We started this initiative to encourage youngsters to read. Recently, we completed the tenth session and the audience, ranging from eight to 80, enjoyed a lot,” says Vinay. Elaborating on his journey, he adds,

“Every new initiative has its ups and downs and Abhivyakti is no exception. We’re still in the process of building ourselves. Last June, a friend of mine approached me, considering our work in Hindustani theatre, to do something connected with Indian literature at the G.P. Birla library. This was a good opportunity for me to learn something new as well. So, we decided on the story reading format to be held on the evening of the last Saturday every month at the G.P. Birla  library.”

The name Abhivyakti had come up as the initiative was all about expressing. “After our first session, suggestions started pouring in for story reading workshops, because people thought that youngsters should be driven towards the fragrance of books,” he says.

Vinay, at his reading sessions, doesn’t stick to a particular genre. “I’ve read stories from human relationships to satire to trust in marital life to partition pangs to child psychology to parent-children relationships to social and moral values. One day at least two out of 10 youngsters will be seen holding a book in their hands. It’s imperative that we promote our Indian languages and the literature surrounding it,” says Vinay.