Tara Books' books

My current employer is best known for their handmade books, of which they’ve handmade some 150,000, or, as they would write in India, 1,50,000 (something to do with lakhs and croors, I don’t really get it). The books range from children’s books to visual arts to fiction to…don’t get me started I’ve spent the last two weeks working on their fall catalog, or, as they would write in India, catalogue. The main Tara office, a six-room house about 15 minutes walk from my 4-room residence, is far removed from the handmade aspects of the company and we follow the typical modern business protocol of vacantly staring at computer screens and getting up to stretch every hour or so as to avoid future muscle dystrophy. So, even after reading the ‘Handmade’ section in last years catalog, I had no first hand experience of the Tara press and no real idea of the process of this “bookmaking”(even though I’m pretty sure I took that class in college…college is so silly) until today.

After a fairly exhilarating drive to the south of Chennai we pulled up to a bright yellow house: the residence of Arumugam (Mr. A to us sloth-tongued Anglos) and his thirteen magical bookmaking elves, or south Indians, whichever fits your fantasy. Mr. A shares a corner of my rounded-triangle-shaped desk in the office, the third round-corner being shared by Shalini, an ambitious 28-year-old who used to write for the Hindu but took a pay cut to come oversee PR at Tara. So Mr. A, his wife and two kids, and thirteen strapping, young bookmakers all live and work within this bright yellow house.

I don’t know about the average first-world person, but when I hear the words handmade, 150,000, and press together I imagine at least some form of machinery present to assist in the process. Well, as I’ve come to expect, my imagination mislead me; these books are entirely handmade. More specifically they are screen printed, color-by-color, page-by-page, book-by-book, day-by-day. Anyone who’s ever seen a handmade Tara book (just me? I doubt my dad even knows the name of the company where I’m working, and I’m certain he doesn’t read this blog—by the way dad I got my first taste of bacterial-stomach infection this weekend, I felt weak immediately after eating some samosas and then had a headache, stomach ache and fever, in that order, only just recovering today.) Right. So, anyone who’s even seen a handmade Tara book knows that they are quite well done, as if every page could be displayed in a gallery, which is in fact becoming a larger part of their business. I may try to get them a show in Santa Fe, anyone know any galleries there? Well these fine pieces of work are made on the roof of a building in south India by thirteen young men who came from the village to find work in the city and ended up finding work, housing and community. Not bad. They even have a television to watch cricket on, which is something I wouldn’t mind doing right now as I try and gauge my digestion capacity.

Also, if anyone talks to Dustin tell him I am gravely disappointed with his neglect of his blog and lack of update since I left San Francisco.