Every year, new English words are added to the dictionaries. We would like to propose a new one: books-hopping. If people can spend their time pub-hopping and ashram-hopping and partner-hopping, why not also do the same with bookshops?
It all started with a brainstorming session. Now that the lockdowns are over and we can meet our author colleagues again, around two months ago we, Shatrujeet Nath and Zac O’Yeah, were having lunch at Bengaluru’s Koshy’s, an old-time café where the literati used to meet before the pandemic, when we suddenly got the feeling that as writers we should do something for the bookshops.
For us, two years of lockdowns have meant sitting at home writing our books. Maybe we missed literary festivals and meeting other writers, but for bookshops it must have been infinitely worse: having to keep the place going, the uncertainty from repeated closures, and the disappearance of the browsing customer.
So it felt like a duty to do something to help bookshops get readers back. After lunch that day, we crossed the road to nearby Church Street. There are more amazing bookshops, and most of them independents, in this 750-metre-long, pub- and café-filled pedestrian stretch in central Bengaluru (ten at the last count if those in by-lanes are counted) than in any other street in the country. Incredibly, Covid-19 has not vanquished any of these stores.
We walked the length of Church Street and asked bookshop owners what they might think of a campaign in support of them. Our simple idea was to fill their shops with city-based authors and readers and do free programmes for anybody wishing to listen, with discussions about favourite books (perhaps ones that could be found in their shops), anecdotes about unusual bookshop experiences, as well as accounts from the owners themselves about their histories and recent challenges.
Being somewhat naïve and perhaps over-optimistic, we figured that if we could get 19 writers together for a weekend of fun, like this only, in our local bookshops, we might break the evil spell of Covid-19 and celebrate browsing offline in real great brick-and-mortar bookshops. To celebrate them as the important cultural institutions that they are.
And they were very moved, the shopkeepers, some of them had tears in their eyes and thanked us a lot for offering our help.
The writers we asked loved the idea of doing something different from the usual bookshop signings. Rather than promote our own books, we’d promote a passion for reading, talk about books that inspire, browse in the shops together with the readers, and celebrate the providers of literature – the bookshops.
Among the writers who volunteered to support it were the likes of Ramachandra Guha, Anita Nair, Jeet Thayil, Anjum Hasan, Nisha Susan, Samhita Arni and many others, including Kannada writers such as Vasudhendra and Kannada translator Chandan Gowda. Poets and sports writers, detective novelists and serious novelists, children’s writers and historians were among those represented.
They came together in six of our favourite bookshops, all of it pulled off without sponsorships or branding of any kind. At least five of the bookshops were packed, with standing room only for latecomers, in the sixth the courtyard space was large so even with a crowd of some sixty people, we could have fitted in a few more... Next time!
Day one
On May 28, the first day’s programme ranged from the intimate evening session at the quirky Goobe’s Book Republic to the oceans of booklove causing waves in the bigger shops. The inaugural gala at The Book Hive had Shinie Antony, Anjum Hasan, Indira Chandrasekhar and Chandan Gowda speaking in the small but extremely well-managed store – one of the youngest in Church Street.
In fact, this new and used bookstore had opened as recently as in 2017 and miraculously survived the pandemic that followed soon after. Young proprietor, Keshava R seemed unfazed and said business is hopefully picking up and offered booklovers a 20 percent discount on anything they wished to buy. This was followed by a discussion about Bengaluru’s potential as a city of literary events – where multiple litfests and book talks used to take place around the year before Covid-19 stopped them.
Chief guest Shinie Antony, popular fiction writer and newspaper columnist, also happens to be the cofounder of the Bangalore Literature Festival, the biggest event in Bengaluru’s literary calendar. She felt that Bengaluru’s bookshop culture is so unique that this kind of thing can only happen in Church Street. If you’re planning to do this in Mumbai or Delhi, then you might also have to take this city’s audiences with you, she said.
Chandan Gowda, professor and scholar, spoke about how he had chanced upon The Book Hive while strolling down the street and become friends with the owner, who was able to source him books difficult to get elsewhere. Anjum Hasan, author of several novels, said that there is a difference we must hold on to between being consumers and being readers. Even if online bookstores can one day recreate all the aspects of a physical one and more, they are algorithm-driven to sell in a way that a physical bookstore, which is often an education in chance, and an exercise in daydreaming, is not.
This was followed by a two-hour show at Blossoms Book House down the street, where more writers joined the party – such as Jeet Thayil and Anita Nair. But before they took the stage, the proprietor Mayi Gowda talked about how he gave up his engineering career 20 years ago and opened the first Blossoms, a minuscule cubicle at the back of a nearby shopping complex with around 1500 books.
Business took off and, true to its name, his stall blossomed and grew into two gigantic stores in Church Street, making Blossoms probably the biggest new and second-hand trader in India, selling on an average 1500 books a day, a feat that earned it listings in tourist guides like Lonely Planet and Frommers as one of the city’s must-sees.
Amongst many other stories, the poet, novelist and music composer Jeet Thayil – whose Narcopolis was shortlisted for the Booker – told of some rare first-edition poetry collections that he had bought for next to nothing in that particular shop – which summarised, in a way, the theme of the entire session: Bangalore’s Love Affair with Bookshops. Among the audience were a couple who had met at Blossoms and got married last year, which they wished to share as a tribute to the shop.
Others insisted that something similar be done to encourage children to read. Meet somebody in a bookshop, marry that person, have kids, and add more booklovers to the world…Great plan!
The day’s final event at the tiny, basement Goobe’s Book Republic, where again more writers – such as Samhita Arni, author of The New York Times bestseller Sita’s Ramayana, joined the others. Goobe’s is one of the city’s coolest young bookshops, run by the hippie-minded visionary Ravi Menezes, whose carefully put together assortment of pop culture non-fiction and sci-fi reflects his range of interests, which include alternative movements, social responsibility, composting garbage, slum libraries, and rural literacy.
If people can’t afford to buy a book from him (even though rates start at 25 rupees), they can rent it instead which, all in all, makes Goobe’s one of the most phenomenal ventures since the city’s legendary bookshop Premier shut down in 2009. In a manner, Goobe’s is a worthy heir as it is located right around the corner from the lost shop. The theme of the talkshow was, aptly, The Friendly Bookshop.
The audience, too, shared their bookshop anecdotes during the interactive sessions. Some of them were returning to offline shops after two years and loved the feeling of being back. Other young booklovers, who had just moved for work into the city after the pandemic, some as recently as within the last week, were elated to discover the bookshops of Bengaluru where they could come together with likeminded people and local writers, and thus found their footing in a new city.
Day two
May 29 started with the proprietor of Select Book Shop, Mr Murthy, sharing memories about the nearly 100-year-old shop’s history and how he’s been part of it since he was a youngster in 1927. Luminaries who frequented this time-warped space in the past include the Nobel laureate CV Raman, bestselling children’s author Ruskin Bond and legendary playwright Girish Karnad, yet the shop remains a tranquil haven tucked away just steps off the bustling Brigade Road.
One of the youngsters who crowded the shop and was impressed by Mr Murthy’s story was debutant novelist Roshan Ali who then shared anecdotes about life-changing experiences that he’d had at other similar bookshops, in a session titled The Remembered Bookshop.
Eminent historian Professor Ramachandra Guha, who eulogised the shop in his essay collection The Last Liberal, declaring it to be his “favourite of all India’s second-hand bookshops”, then told of a serendipitous discovery. Pointing to the bottom of one of Select’s crammed bookshelves, he described how he was searching for out-of-print political pamphlets, and gently managed to pull out a thin document from the bottom of a pile, hoping that it might be something that Mahatma Gandhi or somebody like that had published.
It turned out to be a hand-written copy of his very own grandmother’s horoscope! He immediately bought it, the find of a lifetime spent browsing in bookshops and archives. ‘We’re lucky we have so many bookshops in Bangalore… [but] Bangalore doesn’t just have lots of authors and bookshops, it has a great many readers. After Delhi, Bangalore is the biggest book market.’ As if to prove it, booklovers jumped at the opportunity to snap their selfies with him.
Popular Sahitya Akademi award-winning novelist Vasudhendra, who has been publishing prolifically in Kannada for over twenty years and is perhaps best known for his book Mohanaswamy, a collection of stories portraying the lives of local gay gentlemen, described unbelievable experiences he’s had in bookshops around the world and in India, totally thrilling the listeners, and said, “There is a need to bring bookshops, readers and authors under one umbrella.” Which just added to the urgency of our weekend of bookshop love.
In the afternoon we authors and booklovers walked to the Raj-era Higginbothams (around the corner in MG Road) which has revived after having been boarded up for years, now smartly renovated back to its former glory. The chain was founded in south India in the 1800s, branding itself as “official booksellers to His Royal Highness” (namely the Prince of Wales, Edward VII, who once came to browse in their store).
During the session, the audience learnt that despite the English-sounding name, the original founder Mr Higginbotham was actually born in Kannur in Kerala, from where he travelled to Madras to found the first bookshop bearing his name in the 1840s! The long and intensive discussion that followed – in their beautifully maintained courtyard – went more towards the modern bookshop of today and what it might be good for.
Eshwar Sundaresan – counsellor and author of Behind the Silicon Mask and Bangalored: the Expat Story – explained to people what bibliotherapy is, pointing out, “The notion that the written word can heal is more than two millennia old. Seen in that context, bookshops are well-equipped hospitals stocked with solutions to every emotional ache.”
At that moment everybody glanced at one grumpy aunty in the audience, who had insulted many of the authors the previous day, calling our love for bookshops “gloating” and then stormed out in the middle of a session. Despite that she had returned for more…and now was unexpectedly smiling. Perhaps even her permafrost-crusty heart had started warming to the idea? If we had managed to turn this bookshop hater into a bookshop lover all our efforts began to seem not only meaningful, but important for the future of literature.
At the concluding event at The Bookworm, the talk was about the bookshop of the future, or the future of bookshops, with many of the authors agreeing that if there were more shops like Bookworm the world would definitely be a better place to live in. We were joined by more authors, such as Jahnavi Barua, a novelist who moved to town from Assam and became part of the city’s literary culture, and Nisha Susan, cult fiction writer and founder of The Ladies Finger webzine.
Bookworm’s always cheerful owner Krishna Gowda took us through his remarkable journey from being a youth who started peddling books on the MG Road pavement decades ago. He did that for five years before he, in 2002, opened a small shop of his own which gradually expanded to four branches in the area, out of which one was exclusively dealing with children’s books – a genre that is one of his many specialities.
Once the pandemic lockdowns ended, he consolidated his empire in 2021 into one singular outlet in an old colonial era bungalow in a large compound in Church Street, which gave him even more space to display books. The bungalow has a garden where he will soon set up a book café.
This night that garden was packed with booklovers who listened to their favourite writers until long after dark – Samhita Arni, for example, who felt that the ideal bookstore of the future could be a place where likeminded singles can meet and fall in love, because she was utterly disappointed with the uselessness of dating apps. But she loved The Bookworm.
From this BooksHOPPING weekend full of love heaped on bookshops, it is plain that the romance of bookshops is very much alive. And maybe one day Bengaluru will gain a reputation of being the bookshop capital of the world.
Formerly a journalist and assistant editor with The Economic Times, Shatrujeet Nath is the author of spy thriller The Karachi Deception and the bestselling epic mytho-fantasy series VikramadityaVeergatha. His latest book is Warlord of Ayodhya: Rebellion, a spinoff of the Ramayana. Shatrujeet also writes for movies and web shows.
Zac O’Yeah has published nineteen books but is best known as the author of the Majestic Trilogy of novels – Mr Majestic!, Hari: A Hero for Hire, and Tropical Detective – set in Bengaluru. His writings have been translated into more than twenty languages and are included in numerous anthologies. He has worked in the pop music business and in theatrical arts as a performer, manager, scriptwriter and composer.
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