Between the shelves

The author goes on a treasure hunt for books at Blossom, Bengaluru's most popular second-hand bookstore

His bare knees scrapping the floor, nine-year-old Aditya sits hunched over a large carton. For 20 minutes straight, his hands and head stay buried in the box. When he finds what he's looking for, an early edition of Tinkle, he smiles contently, like an archaeologist satisfied with a new discovery. He passes the book to his friend who carefully places it on a pile that is just beginning to grow. "Let's look for more," says Aditya. The two friends are on a mission to collect as many Tinkles as possible.

The site of this is the Blossom Book House on Church Street, Bengaluru. On the first floor of this three-storey bookstore, a group of 20-somethings have spent the last one hour in complete silence: the only sounds you hear, if you listen closely, comes from the table fan near the counter. The silence is broken when a pile of shoulder-high books collapses and falls to the floor, a scene that's a familiar one in the narrow aisles here.

Unlike most places today, this store doesn't stock any stationery, not even pens, but it has braved the onslaught of online marketplaces and retained its place as a treasured haunt of book-lovers.

Eighty per cent of the books at Blossom are second-hand and often come with names or notes inked on their pages. Sometimes, it even comes with letters, the most surprising of which was written by Rabindranath Tagore.

Dated December 27, 1931,on a yellowed letterhead of Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan, the letter is not addressed to any one. "It's hard for me to say in a few faltering words how I feel when voices greet me from my own country and from across the seas carrying to me the assurance that I have pleased many and helped some and thus offering me the best reward of my life," it reads. All that the store's proprietor, Mayi Gowda, knows about the letter is that it came in a second-hand book. Now it's mounted on Blossom's walls for all to read.

City-based historian Ramachandra Guha opts for second-hand book stores because they offer the chance of finding books which have long been out of print, or books you didn't even know you wanted. He recounts the time Gowda offered to sell a first edition of an 8-volume work on MK Gandhi by DG Tendulkar which had rare photographs by Vithalbhai Zaveri. "I told Gowda that I already had a copy of the rare book but then he told me that his copy was signed by both Tendulkar and Zaveri," says Guha. He also favours the store for its cultural ethos. Much like other customers, Guha also trades the old books he has for other books he'd like to read.

Once when a customer from Delhi was browsing, he came rushing to Gowda clutching a book in his hand: it was the copy a book he half-read and lost at an airport long ago, and here it was, with his name inscribed in it. "But my greatest happiness was when a young lady came to the store with her seven-year-old daughter. Imagine what the child had asked for as a birthday gift? She wanted to come to Blossom," exclaims Gowda.

A customer at the new Blossom bookstore in Bengaluru

It's been a long road for Gowda, the son of a farmer, who came to Bengaluru to study engineering. During the early days of college, Gowda would work night shifts in a factory, but when his grades began to suffer, he had to drop out of college. Gowda then began selling second-hand books on the pavement near Mayo Hall, and when that picked up, he resumed college.

But barely 15 days after he was recruited as an engineer, Gowda quit when he realised he liked selling books better. In 2002, the first 'edition' of Blossom opened on Church Street in an area of 200 sq ft, and the store has grown over 3,500 sq ft. But because Gowda still had, and has, books spilling out of the roof-high aisles, Gowda has opened another store, also called Blossom, just down the same lane.

The new place is spread over 8,650 sq ft and offers stationery and games, but it seamlessly reflects the no-frills charm of the original. Banking on the patronage of loyalists, young and old, Blossom minted Rs 55 lakh last month and figures are expected to shine brighter once all the cartons at the second store are emptied out.

There's no better place if you want to chance upon a copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables(1959), or of Laurence Binyon's Akbar, 1933. With good finds that come astonishingly discounted, the more you dig, the heavier your book-basket gets. Or, shop for the beauty of it. As a Tumblr post called Overheard at Blossoms reads, "Dude, buy this book. It smells nice."