A bookshop is a world one should truly visit

Weekend had arrived (yet again… so soon!). Late nights, junk food, hours of Playstation and a zillion more questions than on weekdays. I sat lazily in my living room browsing through Facebook to see updates, a bunch of ‘I cook, I clicks’, news, and status updates and comments that followed, etc. My younger one was glued to the TV, watching Oggy and the Cockroaches (a cartoon that I don’t understand; gone are the beautiful days of Tom and Jerry and such likes on television).My older one walked up to me and wanted me to open an online shopping website. I strictly stay away from online shopping. I will get into the reasons another day. I asked him what he wanted. “Ma, I’m done with my Famous Five series and the David Williams set... I’m out of books to read. Can you get me a few?” I was more than happy to hear him say this and dragged him closer to me as I opened the online shopping site. As he was going through the books available, I got lost in thought. That moment, I stood inside one of my favourite memory threads, the days my mother took me to the bookstore in Chennai. Every month, that was an outing I would look forward to. The activity was so engaging and fun and every time, it only got better.
Going to the store, looking through different books, flipping through the variety of topics before picking up the couple that you promised that those would be the only ones you’d take (except when you’d get a couple extra), observing fellow book lovers engrossed in the pages they were turning through. The fragrance of newly stacked books, how boldly and prideful every topic would have a large board over the piled up shelves for people to walk straight up to the right corner to pick up the bound they wanted. Those couple of hours would just fly past every single time. There would be familiar faces that I’d bump into every couple of months (or even every month), and most of times, the topic of books that they chose would be the same. I’d attribute my interest in reading different genres only to my visits to the bookstore. Even if I went wanting to get the ones of my interest, now and then, I would spill over to the next section out of curiosity and that’d lead to a whole new set of books.
No coffee shop, no stationery section, no gift items, no gadget and accessories — just an unadulterated book store that had and sold books and books only. My son jolted me back to reality when he plonked my laptop back on my lap after he’d chosen his set of new books. I felt a tinge of pain in my heart that I couldn’t give that ‘visiting a pure book store’ experience to him in his own city. The minute I take him to a bookstore today, he’d be distracted by all the other things in that store that his book love would take backseat for that moment. He’d want a cupcake from the cafe or want to pick up a new set of crayons instead of looking around for the new bestsellers. Every other week, I open the newspaper to the news that some old book store is shutting down somewhere in the country. I notice with great joy that the habit of reading has caught on quite a pace among the younger generation today. I truly wish we could revive all the shutdown stores to give that surreal experience to these youngsters. Just looking at so many books stacked in one place, believe me, is therapeutic.
It’s not just bookstores that the city misses. The musty, old, treasured libraries are shutting doors as well. Unable to maintain, not able to compete with online giants and lack of people to take care, these walls of memories for many are, sadly, closing down. Back in the days of my parents, and mine, too, a library membership, even if high, would be considered an investment for life. If bookstores were the land of books, a library was the place you took up for rent. You still belonged to that world. If books are chapters, bookstores and libraries are the point where the story begins. My grandfather would go and pick up a book from the library and read more often — even if he could afford to buy it. I still clearly remember flipping through those books, seeing the stamp of the library, and feeling the folds in the corners, wondering how many hands this one would have crossed to get here to my grandfather’s.
Jorge Carrion, the author of the book, Bookshops, wrote, “Every bookshop is a condensed version of the world.” A world one should truly visit. I paid up for the books my boy had chosen and saw his excited face as he asked me when the books would reach home. I could only imagine how magnified the excitement would be if I could take him back in time and make him experience a true Indian bookstore.
(Views expressed above are the author’s own)