What drags me to Daryaganj in Old Delhi on most Sundays is the lure of the weekly book bazaar. Stretching over almost 1.5 km, the pavements in front of the closed shops are invaded by booksellers who descend with all sorts of books and magazines, mostly second-hand.

There is nothing to match the smell of books. It is inimitable and defies description. But one with a sensitive nose may liken it to what we breathe when the monsoon showers hit the parched earth, so mellow and ethereal.

To the booklover, this Sunday bazaar is a veritable goldmine. Walking along the heaps of books on the ground, and turning the pages, you may suddenly come across a book you had long wanted but found the price prohibitive. Now, it is yours for a song. This bazaar is often described as the world’s biggest weekly book market. In some stalls an attempt is made to arrange books according to subject, but don’t be surprised if you find Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress juxtaposed with Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra! In this labyrinth, I even discovered a corner where books were being sold by weight. Imagine my surprise when, just for Rs 50, I got the bonanza of a Roget’s Thesaurus, Walter Scott’s

Kenilworth, Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady and a Tin Tin comic thrown in free — all in excellent condition.

You find all types of books here. A lover of fiction may find books ranging from Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, the longest English novel, to Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, a short one. If you are a whodunnit-addict, there should be no difficulty in locating books by Arthur Conan Doyle to Agatha Christie. There is no dearth of medical and engineering books as well as comics, directories, atlases and cookery books.

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