In photos: the madness and claustrophobia of the Harper Collins book sale

1. Circa 9.40 am: Outside warehouse

All paperbacks at Rs 25. All hard-covers at Rs 30. All coffee-table books at Rs 90. And all box sets at 90% off. Those were the promises that brought 5,000 people to the warehouse in the first two hours of day one of the sale.

2. 9.55am: The single entry gate of the warehouse opens

Game face.

3. 10.05am: Inside the warehouse premises

At this point, only a small fraction of the crowd outside was allowed entry into the warehouse premises. They were asked to write their names on a list.

Someone from Harper called out names. Those whose names were called out were allowed to enter the warehouse.

Hundreds of people. Entering name by name.

4. The lucky ones

Correction. The lucky one. The first person exiting the book sale emerged with a box set of Buddha, a collector's edition of The Hobbit, and a pile that looked like this.

All told, he spent less than Rs 700.

5. 10.45am: Inside warehouse

They tired of the enter-when-your-name-is-announced system. At 10.40 am, at one go, hundreds were allowed inside.

"No photographs!" someone shrieked, when we took this.

6. 11.15am: Someone distributed boxes

Inside the warehouse, here's what you were most likely to find:

Buckets of romantic fiction. Trunks of books about One Direction. If you were lucky, you'd spot a lone Chimamanda Ngozei Adichie. Or an old Jonathan Franzen. Or a damaged Hillary Mantel. Maybe a Hartosh Singh Bal.

And if you were really lucky, you'd find a Lord of the Rings Sketch Book.

By 11 am, all the good stuff was gone. You likely found a few former bestsellers, the less famous books by Booker Prize winners who won the Booker for other books and one, maybe two, new discoveries.

I purchased a book because RK Laxman had declared it a "good effort" (Standards drop significantly when you're paying Rs 25 rupees)

But congratulations! Once you'd gathered your trousseau, you had to crawl your way to a counter where your books would be counted, for which you had to stand for 30 minutes in the June sun, just so someone could (maybe, if you begged enough and pushed enough and outraged enough) make you a bill.

And congratulations again, because you now had to find a counter that would accept cash and stamp your receipt. Another half an hour at a separate counter for this.

If you were paying by card, then a third congratulations was due. Because there was one card machine to process 5,000 customers and one lakh books. And it was placed in the security guard's office.

And if, by a great feat of grit and tolerance of the Delhi summer sun, you survived, then you were tired, smelling, lugging a box of books on foot, and in a far corner of Faridabad. But you also had a grin a mile wide.

Edited by Ranjan Crasta

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