Where are our bookstores now?

by V. Ramnarayan

Vanishing in Madras

Giggles in the Connemara

Many, many bookstores have disappeared from our cities in the last decade or so.

Landmark is a shadow of itself, a landmark name remaining in one location only. Odyssey is still around, doing apparently good business, only because new life has been breathed into it. The Huffington Post has a breezy take on the situation. An article in it says: “Not a good time for books, is it? And by books 1 mean those quaint glue-bonded, ink-on-paper pages that adorn whatever book shelves you still have. Bye-bye Gutenberg. Hello Kindler!”
“I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.” – George Robert Gissing (1857 to 1903).

The e-book makes it possible to continue reading and never have to visit a bookstore. And that threatens to ring the death knell for the real bookshop as against a virtual one. To some readers, however, a physical bookstore is still important. These can be seen at Higginbotham’s, Giggles, Starmark or Odyssey still, but the owners of these bookshops need to constantly think on their feet and come up with innovative ideas.

Giggles, in a corner of the Taj Vivanta on Commander-in-Chief Road, has been around for many decades. Once, a thriving beehive of activity in the main part of the hotel, where readers and potential buyers used to engage in conversation with the owner, Nalini Chettur, Giggles, now has a little cubbyhole of a space bursting with books. It takes the domain knowledge of the owner to locate a book for the customer, who cannot squeeze into the store herself. The store, however, is faced with an order to move: where else is there space for me, wonders Nalini. (Editor’s Note: She has since moved.)

Odyssey Adyar is still alive and kicking, perhaps thanks to the many book readings and other events the owner Ashwin conducts periodically at the shop. The Madras Week in August, for instance, provided a good opportunity for it to showcase Chennai-based authors and that received a great reception.

Higginbotham’s has the advantage of longevity and loyal customers who keep going back to it. Its impressive Tamil book collection is a vital supplement to its stock of English books. The store sends many of its regular buyers a monthly newsletter. Called The Mail, this newsletter is also a way of keeping alive the licence originally granted to the newspaper of the same name, now long defunct.

Crossword, too, in Alwarpet, depends on events and activities, especially those targeting children to keep it afloat and viable.

And Starmark in two malls replaces the large Landmark Stores that closed down. Landmark’s main outlets has been replaced by a more modern version, intriguingly called ‘The Elephant Fort’.

From India’s capital comes this depressing report: “Most bookstores have disappeared. Galgotia’s, miraculously, still survives but has been reduced to one dingy basement. Big players like Reliance TimeOut are forced to close down.”

Almost all bookshops now must offer a variety of products including stationery and writing aids, as well as music collections, to attract clientele in a fast changing world. One of the biggest threats to physical books is posed by devices like the Kindle Reader.

Even diehard bibliophiles prefer to pack hundreds of their favourite books into such hand-held reading devices. At another level, many of us are guilty of buying books online. How can we help it, when they offer a large variety of books and prices that the physical bookshop cannot match?

One booklover says: “I don’t ever want to mourn the demise of books or the endangered status of them just as I did with music tapes and do with music CDs now. I feel a deep sense of loss when I discover a bookstore I knew has closed.

“I hope all bookstores don’t vanish or disappear into the cyber; it would be like losing the common thread of civil life and a street without a bookstore would be like a bookshelf without a book.”
A sentiment easy to share for many of us. – (Couresty: Matrix, Journal of the Sanmar Group.)

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