There are no bookshops in Rampur. There are, of course, shops that sell schoolbooks and academic texts. I am often accosted at the famous R...
There are no bookshops in Rampur. There are, of course, shops that sell schoolbooks and academic texts. I am often accosted at the famous Raza Library with questions about my academic status and plans from absolute strangers. My inquisitors, with their small-town familiarity, are mostly men who advise me to do a PhD. A four-year-old book club in this land of purposeful readers is generally regarded as an idiosyncrasy. “Shauq” is what defines our club in Rampur parlance, embedded with layers of privilege and eccentricity.
Rampur has a glorious literary past. Several Nawabs and their wives were poets and writers. Their tutors were poets of renown like Mirza Ghalib, Ameer Minai, and Daagh Dehlvi. The “Rampur school of poetry”, established by Dehlvi, is acclaimed by literary historians for its robust and elementary style. It includes many contemporary fiction writers who write in Urdu and Hindi – the languages preferred by the local reading public.
Kanwal Bharti, a brilliant young Dalit writer, and several other wonderful Urdu poets are associated with it. Most writers get their works self-published or through the Raza Library. I have attended seminars on the Rampur writers of yore and book launches at the library. The hall is filled...
