Nilanjana S Roy: The Old Curiosity Shop

SPEAKING VOLUMES

How most people mark the passage from childhood into adulthood, I do not know; I marked it by my first solo visit to a bookshop, unaccompanied by adults who would tell me what to buy, clutching a few notes that represented my first ever earnings.

I was about 15, missing my father's ability to tactfully lead me to books I'd never heard of but discovered were just what I'd needed. (My father's book-buying habits resembled his approach to household shopping: just as, given a list of dals and masalas, he would return with figs and biscuits, so would he ignore plumbers' bills in favour of buying a set of books on The History of the World.)

But he was in Delhi, and I was making an undeclared trip to a bookstore in Kolkata where I was terrified that the attendants would sneer at me.

It began badly, with the lady at the counter suggesting the What Katy Did books. My diffidence disappeared in the face of what I saw as a slight. "Oh, I've read all of those ages ago""when I was small," I said loftily. She didn't allow even the flicker of a smile to cross her face.

Instead she led me deftly into a discussion of reading, cross-examined me subtly, and produced Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird with expert judgement. I still have my copy; ragged, dog-eared, sadly tatty, but then it's the first book I devoured as a paying adult.

It gave me my first real sense of what a bookshop could be. Stuart Brent, who ran a legendary Chicago bookshop, wrote of his trade: "Why did people come, often far out of their way and at considerable inconvenience?

There was nothing there but the books and me""and a great deal of talk. But some need must have been filled""by moving people to take notice of themselves, forcing them to think about what they were reading or what they were listening to."

In Delhi, my custom is divided between Khan Market's venerable Bahrisons and The Bookshop, Vasant Vihar's Fact and Fiction, Hauz Khas' Midlands, Connaught Place's Bookworm, a smattering of speciality shops, and the Sunday book bazaar at Daryaganj's pavement markets.

The news that one of these landmarks is tottering is more than disquieting. When The Bookshop closes its doors in Khan Market (the Jorbagh branch will survive, though), as it anticipates it will sometime next year, it will end a conversation that's been in progress for over 20 years.

John Usher wrote in The Hound on the closing of bookshops: "Thus, we come to the twilight of the age of books; to the closing of the mind; to the pitiful end of the quest for knowledge""and stare into the cold abyss of night."

There's always a story, sometimes a veritable novel, behind a bookshop. (The ones that are set up with enthusiasm but limited knowledge are very short stories; miniature tragedies restricted to the space of farce.)

Bahrisons, in the same market as The Bookshop, for instance, was set up by Balraj Bahri Malhotra with Rs 800, raised by selling his wife's jewellery in the bleak post-Partition years.

K D Singh's Bookshop was set up in Jorbagh in part to stymie potential competition for the next-door delicatessen, Steakhouse. Along with cold cuts, Steakhouse in the 1960s sold books over the counter.

Says K D Singh, "Love Story, The Godfather, Deliverance, Crichton's The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Gay Talese's Honour Thy Father, anything by Arthur Hailey, Irving Wallace""these did well.

The sales of even those few books would cover the expenses, rents and salaries""about Rs 300 for rent, and Rs 250 a month for salaries!"

Most books were priced under ten rupees, and KD remembers telling publishers: "Nobody's going to buy a book for more than ten rupees. Keep it at nine rupees seventy five paise." A rent-related lawsuit is what's forcing The Bookshop to down shutters in Khan Market.

Like the Bookworm and Fact & Fiction, the USP of The Bookshop for readers is simple: the people who work there know and love books.

In Bombay, the legendary T N Shanbag has run his bookshop for over 55 years on the same principle: whether it's Carducci or Booth Tarkington that you want, someone will be able to discuss their works with you at The Strand.

We remember bookshops the way we remember old friends.

Ramachandra Guha wrote in a column for The Hindu about a long-lasting love: "My memories of other cities also always involve second-hand books. Ahmedabad for me means the Sunday Market below Ellis Bridge: Bombay the fabulously well-stocked pavement stalls near Flora Fountain; Madras the now dead bookstalls of the now burnt Moore Market; Gurgaon the capacious collection of out-of-print volumes held by Prabhu Booksellers, located deep in the town's old market."

He omitted Kolkata's College Street, but I'm told that this former haven for rare and interesting books is overrun by pirated Bengali versions of English bestsellers. Sad, if it's true.

I remember the story about the bookseller who let a brilliant but broke Bengali author buy a set number of books each month; the books would be read and returned, and the author would "buy" another set of books. He paid only for the first set he bought at the start of the year; the money was like an annual fee for a reading fund!

That's where the small bookshop run by book-lovers scores over both the Internet and the new McReading chains, which do for books what the advent of the hamburger did for fine cuisine. They know there's more to books and reading than just the sales graphs.

Another bibliophile, A Edward Newton, understood what all of us really want from booksellers.

He wrote of a favourite London establishment: "Its name suggests that, although you may not find in the Serendipity Shop what you came for, you will still find something that you want, although you did not know it when you came in. Is not every bookshop in fact, if not in name, a Serendipity Shop?"

And that's why I'm mourning The Bookshop in advance. I could do with more, not less, serendipity in my life.

nilanjanasroy@gmail.com