The researcher compares two types of pirated books found in Daryaganj Sunday Book Market in Delhi — a low-price self-help manual in Hindi and a ‘D’ copy of an English novel by popular Indian author Chetan Bhagat.
Author
Kanupriya Dhingra, Assistant Professor, Jindal School of Languages and Literature, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India.
Summary
Daryaganj Sunday Book Market, popularly known as Daryaganj Sunday Patri Kitab Bazaar, is a weekly informal market for used, rare, and pirated books that has been operating on the streets of Old Delhi for the past fifty years.
In this essay, I focus on one of the circuits that has been flourishing in this market, that of pirated or ‘duplicate’ or D-books. In order to examine the forms in which piracy thrives in the present-day Patri Kitab Bazaar, and the reasons behind it, I compare two types of pirated books found here: a low-price self-help manual in Hindi and a ‘D’ copy of an English novel by popular Indian author Chetan Bhagat.
As I examine the essential role that ‘randomness’ plays in the constitution of pirated texts, I suggest that there is organization to this apparent lack of pattern or unpredictability. Such permutation of order and chaos resonates with the location of the bazaar – a site that thrives on the serendipity of the streets.
Published in: Comparative Critical Studies
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