Book-lovers sad as a legacy bookstore in Hyd shuts shop

Perhaps the oldest and the most loved book shop in Hyderabad is closing down. It is curtains for AA Husain’s, the legacy book store in Abids that dates back to Nizam’s era.
“The online retailers have crushed us. We cannot sustain any more. The building which is Wakf property is going to be demolished for redevelopment and I don’t think they will be able to hire a premises in the new building,” says Asif Husain Arastu, the fourth generation shop owner.
Just beside Santosh Cinema with a small signboard with scrawlings of Asterix and Tintin, the glass frontage covered with books and book jackets ranging from Hyderabad history to birdwatching (Asif is an avid birdwatcher), the shop was a must-stop for many Hyderabadis before the malls took over. Once Abids declined as a shopping destination, the footfalls declined. “We literally have to wait for customers to walk in. Nowadays, buying online is cheaper and the inventory they have is huge. It became difficult to compete with them,” says Asif with a tinge of despair.
For most Hyderabadis, Husain’s was part of the city’s life. If it was childhood memory of a bonus book for summer vacation for some, it was the adda for picking up comics and keeping track of hobbies for others.
In a world of bookshops with rows and rows of books smelling of perfume by franchisee authors in air-conditioned chill, the warm embrace and the smell of books from overladen shelves of Husain’s was a slice of old world.
“I remember the excitement of June 21, 2003 when our whole family turned up at 5.30 am to wait outside the shop to pick up Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix. I wrote down the time and date and it is one of my most cherished memories,” says N Anushaw, now an M Tech student.
While most book stores would just leave the books on the shelves, at Husain’s, the books were kept in a polythene cover to keep the dust of Abids main road at bay. It was like a treasure chest with buried and hidden nick knacks. Started sometime in 1942 in Nizami Hyderabad as a hobby store by M Riazath Husain Arastu, the grandson of Sir Abdul Husain Arastu, who was Nizam Mahbub Ali Pasha’s surgeon, it became a book store in 1949.
Riazath was a numismatist and philatelist and the shop became a beehive of activity for hobby maniacs in Hyderabad. Once his son Shoukath took over the shop and it expanded into a full fledged bookstore with a mezzanine bursting with children’s books. Drawing a pixel picture of Shoukath is Aashis Pittie in a blog ‘The Bookstore That Changed my Life’: “He was a natural hobbyist, a born collector, and a meticulous cataloguer, of stamps, coins, postcards, matchbox labels, and other ephemera of modern civilisation. And he pressed these pastimes upon us as a natural corollary of reading.”
The current owner, Asif Husain took over in 1996 just as Rowling publishing phenomenon Harry Potter’s book magic was unfolding across the world. But the publishing phenomenon might have been a wee bit too late.
On all the books sold at Husain’s there is a small sticker. Now, the sticker will become a memento to a life gone by. Of another landmark erased by the relentless march of development.