India’s first Village of Books
The Maharashtra government got 75-odd artists to paint
the walls of the 25 premises at Pustakanche Gaon (village
of books). The state did crowd sourcing by inviting Swatva,
an informal WhatsApp-based artist and art-lovers’ network,
to take up the task of decorating the village. The artists
participated in a three-day wall painting camp at Bhilar near
Mahabaleshwar and covered the 25 premises measuring
11,000 square feet with paintings and graphics to indicate
which genre of books are kept at a particular house, school
or a temple, just like demarcating types of books in a library.
For a place that has books on Shivcharitra (life of Shivaji
Maharaj), paintings of fort and the warrior king have been
created on the walls and for a building that has literature on
saints, paintings of famous saints have been used to adorn it.
The 25 premises in the village have 25 different paintings.
‘These artists voluntarily accepted our invitation and
boarded a bus to Mahabaleshwar to paint the walls in the
village with their imagination. The outcome was amazing
and for the people to see,’ said the Minister of Cultural
Affairs and Marathi Language, Vinod Tawde. Praising
the people and the administration of Bhilar, Tawde added,
‘The village administration has been very enthusiastic and
working with us on the project. The best part is that the
people of Bhilar have understood the concept of creating a
book village very well, making it easy for us to implement
it on the ground.’
Inspired by the Welsh town, Hay-on-Wye, which is
famous for its book stores and literary festivals, the book
village in the state was supposed to come up by November
2015 as announced by Tawde himself.
‘Although an international concept, we are giving it a
very Indian look. The project is aimed at promoting a book
village or town of books and eventually
making it a main tourist hub by itself,
just like Hay-on-Wye. Not just this,
the goal is also to promote Marathi
language,’ Tawde said.
Currently, all 10,000 books provided
by the state government are in Marathi.
The state plans to add 15-20 per cent
more to the collection and those books
will be in Hindi and English. ‘We
also plan to organise literary events,
interactions with authors and poets, and
book-reading sessions,’ Tawde said.