Varied fare: On display at the fair were more than 1,500 titles, including classics. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement more-in Books can provide companionship to prisoners serving out their sentence — proof of this concept was evident in its implementation when prisoners at the Central Prison in Puzhal bought books from a fair held exclusively for them inside the jail. The Prison Department requested the Tamil Nadu Nool Membaattu Kuzhumam to organise the three-day event, which ended on Saturday. On display were over 1,500 titles on subjects like Literature, History, the Tamil language, self-motivation and health, offered at a discount of 30%. V. Rukmani Priyadharshini, Superintendent of the Central Prison-I in Puzhal, said, “We have organised such a fair exclusively, possibly for the first time. Our aim is to inculcate the reading habit among prisoners, who often find themselves lonely inside the prison and have a lot of time on their hands.” Prisoners manned the stalls, and browsed to select books, but money did not change hands. Payments were deductible from the Prisoners’ Cash Property Account; wages are held in this account by the prison authorities when convicts earn for assigned work. Prison officials said Tamil classics such as the Thirukural, the Thirumnathiram; epics like the Mahabharatham and Ramayanam; poetry by Bharathi, Bharathidasan and Nammakkal Kavignar Ramalingam, Kalki’s Ponniyin Selvan and Alai Osai, short stories by Pudumaipithan, Na. Pichamurthy and Jayakanthan, and books on self-improvement, sold faster. U. Baskaran, psychologist, Prison Department said, “Many prisoners keep updating their knowledge by reading books.” There was a special stall on ‘jail literature’ Nelson Mandela’s Conversation with Myself, Miguel De Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and M. K. Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

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