Mr. Zero goes to the Bookfair (pun intended)

This blogger is a complete nuthead and wades through the life for very unobvious reasons. Most of what he thinks, talks or writes is about (or, related to) films. This time he revives a little bit of his enthusiasm towards books, which has come in intermittent fits in the past, and goes to the Chennai Book Fair 2006.
This time he ventures into the bookfair mainly for some Tamil books (IHHO, this bookfair is just not the place for English books). He is truly an ignorant chap when it comes to Tamil books. Not that he is a voracious reader of English literature. But, at least, he had those fits of enthusiasm at different times.
That, he somehow managed to get his stories (and even some dimwitted poems) written in Tamil published in his college Thamizh Mandram website is something he is able to look back and laugh at.
The only Tamil poem this blogger ever recited (yeah, he never wrote poems, a la Gunaa; once he recited this "poem" jocularly mocking the poem competition his literary friends conducted; however, they went ahead and published it in their website!) read something like this.

Thoorathil paarthaal, unnai kaattum...
Arugil paarthaal, ulagai kaattum... Kannaadi!

The poem is paraphrased and pullis and aacharya kuris added for desired effect, if any.

Back to yesterday. He makes a rich haul of 6-7 Tamil books, a personal record; much of which were suggested in this blog; like Aathavan's En Peyar Ramaseshan (one of the prime reasons for the reason of his visit) and Kaagitha Malargal; and also Sujatha's Eppothum Penn. He also picks S. Ramakrishnan's (who, he hears, wrote some excellent articles in Aanantha Vikatan; but somehow chooses not to buy those - Thunaiezhuthu and Kathaavilaasam - because he expects some acquaintance of his to buy/must be already having it) Urupasi.
Even the last year he did visit the bookfair; but didn't look beyond film-related books. From what he remembers, he bought the screenplay of Santosh Sivan's film Terrorist. {There were screenplays for a host of movies made in other languages. But he doesn't exactly like the idea of reading the screenplays of other language films in Tamil. He prefers either seeing the film subtitled, :p, or at least reading an English translation}. This time, he buys this book, if his memory serves him right titled Nadippu Enbathu Enna?, written by Mahendran (he has already read Mahendran's Cinemaavum Naanum and the screenplay of his masterpiece Uthiri Pookkal, before) and a bunch of issues of Thirai, one of those low-profile high-brow Tamil film magazines (like Uyirmai and Kaalachuvadu), the contents of which he mostly disagreed (quite vehemently) with, in the past.
Also among the picks were Sundara Ramasamy's Oru Puliyamarathin Kadhai (about which he has heard his friend rave about) and Vaanagamae Ila Veyilae.
The funniest of all, he buys this book called Naalu Moolai, a collection of essays by Ra. Ki. Rangarajan published in Annanagar Times, just because the cover looked good![*] Though, he would rationalize it by saying that, he did have immense liking and respect towards Ra. Ki. Rangarajan, because of the simple reason that the same writer co-wrote the dialogues of the film which he considers as the best of Tamil cinema.

[*] - The man in the same stall kept suggesting this new book about the Travis Bickle'ish lives of software engineers in India (apparently, a first of its kind in Tamil literature) whose title he has forgotten now. He should try it later.

Thank-you Note:
Lazygeek and Chenthil.

End note:
Time for some good reading!

Update (on Jan 17 10:46 a.m.):
This blog has no readership whatsoever. But, just in case, if somebody chose to click on the link to this blogger's published short story and entertain himself/herself, he/she might have to use IE; and even worse, install fonts from here.