Lucknow: Walk into the 23rd National Book Fair at Balrampur Garden on Ashok Marg and you can tell within minutes who has come for what. Some visitors drift slowly past shelves of novels and poetry. Others head straight for the stalls stacked with UPSC guides, ready to compare editions and hunt for a discount. On the seventh day of the fair, Wednesday, the second group was hard to miss.
Young readers preparing for civil services, entrance tests and recruitment exams crowded the competitive-exam stalls, where Hindi and English study material was on sale at reduced prices. At Upkar Prakashan, the shelves covered UPSC, state civil services, CSAT and NET-JRF, with copies of Pratiyogita Darpan alongside. There were NCERT-based objective question banks, current affairs and general knowledge titles, reasoning guides, and learning resources for school students.
Over at the Prabhat stall, the titles did much of the talking: Aao Karein UPSC Crack, Pariksha Mein Merit Kaise Paayen and IIT Mein Pravesh Kaise. Rajpal, Yashika, Aryan Book and Padma Book rounded out the picture with motivational reading and student-friendly books.
But the fair is more than a marketplace for exam preparation, and by afternoon its stages were just as lively.
At the Creator Lounge, Dr Uday Pratap Singh shared selected works and chatted with admirers. Asked about recognition, he said the honour of an award means more to him than the money that comes with it, and that he has used over half of his prize money to help people in need.
The mood turned playful with Chheentakashi-2026, a satire session organised by the Uttar Pradesh Sahitya Sabha and coordinated by Pankaj Prasoon. Dr K. Kant Asthana, Mukul Mahan, Sarvesh Asthana, Sanjeev Jaiswal Sanjay, Alankar Rastogi and Parvesh Jain took turns with humorous and satirical compositions.
On the main stage, the Lucknow chapter of the Akhil Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad held a poetry gathering chaired by Nirbhay Narayan Gupta and conducted by Mamta Pankaj. The event saw the release of Payal Lakshmi Soni’s collection Silvatein, with Narendra Bhushan as chief guest. The poems ranged widely, from Partition and the environment to family ties and historical figures.
A more reflective conversation came from the Vasundhara Foundation, which organised a discussion titled “Gandhi, Bose, Bhagat, Vivekananda: Our Guiding Lights,” coordinated by Rakesh Srivastava. The panel included Padma Shri awardee Vidya Vindu Singh, Akhilesh Srivastava Chaman, satirist Mukul Mahan, Indian Bank Assistant General Manager Navneet Kumar, Pankaj Prasoon and senior journalist Sudhir Mishra. The foundation also presented the Vasundhara Samman to scientist and actor Dr Anil Rastogi and felicitated students who had won its essay competitions in schools.
New books made their debut too. Aparna Yadav, vice-chairperson of the Uttar Pradesh State Commission for Women, released Spark, a short-story collection by Dr Shilpi Bakshi Shukla. Praising the book, she urged the younger generation to read newspapers and books to broaden their knowledge. The author then read two of her stories to the audience.
Perhaps the most striking launch came from the youngest author of the day. Kartikeya Chandra, a 16-year-old Class XII student, saw his English suspense-thriller collection The Light Flickered released by author Mahendra Agarwal.
For students buried in syllabi, the fair offered both the books to prepare with and a reminder of why people read at all. It continues until October 11.
