Children's joy radiates at Chinar Book Festival

Srinagar, Jul 18 (PTI) Hundreds of schoolchildren visited the Chinar Book Festival here on the very first day of the fair. The book festival began on Saturday at the Kashmir International Convention Centre (SKICC), situated on the banks of the famous Dal Lake. The children were overjoyed to find themselves surrounded by books. They also participated in a drawing competition, sketching mountains, tricolour, and various other things. The festival was inaugurated by Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha. Over 200 publishers and book stalls displaying titles in English, Urdu, Kashmiri, Hindi and several other Indian languages are featuring in the festival, which will end on July 26. Many children bought books on science, general knowledge and fantasy, apart from their school curriculum books. Zainab, a seventh-grade student from a government school in Srinagar, said this was her first time visiting a book fair, and she was delighted to see so many books in one place. She purchased storybooks, while some books were distributed to the children free of cost by the organiser, National Book Trust. Massarat, a teacher from Ganderbal—located 35 kilometres from Srinagar—also came to visit the book fair. She mentioned that the children were very happy with the fair. There was also a selfie point right by the banks of Dal Lake where children were taking selfies while standing next to a cutout of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On Saturday, 24 bilingual books, prepared during the first Gojri translation workshop held during the previous edition of this fair, were also released. A set of books based on Kalhan's famous work "Rajtarangini" was also released by the LG on the first day. PTI NK AMJ AMJ