Life & experience: Bookshop babble
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It’s always a pleasure to go to a bookshop. And browse through books. And talk about recently published books with the proprietor. And see people’s faces light up when reading a beautiful line or pucker in disappointment at not being able to afford a book that they dearly want to read. No surprise then that I would drop by the Educational Book House in Jamal on my way back home, on average, three times a week. That is, until we started our own bookstore: Bookworm.
Knowing that I enjoy being among books, my friends suggested that I man the bookstore. I agreed, thinking that it would be a fun job. But has it been fun tending to the bookstore? The reading types think that I must be having loads of fun working in a kind of paradise, which they believe a bookstore is. In fact, a book glutton, who works at an international organisation and earns five times more than what I earn, keeps saying that we should swap jobs. I would, if it were possible.
It’s not fun sitting in a bookstore—daily, from 10 to 7. The books tend to oppress you if you sit honeycombed between them every day. It is not for nothing that writer George Orwell, who once worked in a second-hand bookstore, wrote this: “Seen in the mass, 5 or 10,000 at a time, books were boring and even slightly sickening.” No wonder he didn’t want to be “in the book trade for life.” Neither do I.
However, unlike Orwell, who lost his appetite for books and read little while working in the bookstore, I haven’t been reading any less. Instead, being among books has made me greedy; making me want to devour as many as possible. This is what has keeps me at Bookworm. Still.
In over a year that I have been at Bookworm, I have had the opportunity to meet different categories of readers—serious, occasional and early beginners. The first category of readers are very bookish—like the cute little girl who would come to the bookstore twice every week, take a book out and read quietly, without taking her eyes off the book, as her mom took music lessons in the Jazz Conservatory upstairs. They run their eyes over every title on display, take a book that takes their fancy and read the blurbs and a few paragraphs before deciding to buy it. They also venture out to suggest titles or authors that they find missing in the bookstore and tell us why we should stock them. They tut-tut certain titles that they think we should do without, like How to Get Hot Women to Bed. But titles like this move off the shelf fast, even though those buying these titles feel as shy buying them as they would a packet of condoms.
But not all seem as shy. For example, the woman who bought the graphically illustrated Sex is Fun. The woman saw the book, flipped its pages and called for her boyfriend, who was poring over Henry Kissinger books. When the boyfriend came near her, she showed an illustration to him and said, “I want to do like this.” She then came to the counter and said, “Do I get a discount on this?” and bought the book, nonchalantly.
The second category of readers come to the bookstore, ask for the book they want to read and leave in a jiffy as if they have a meeting to attend in five minutes. They don’t know that book browsing is like falling in love, not unlike reading, and buy mostly books that are in the limelight. If they linger for a bit, unsure what to buy, they ask the book owner to suggest them books to read, like the newly love-struck couple who were out on a date at Moksh, the restaurant across the bookstore. The date over, so it seemed, they entered Bookworm and the boy asked me to suggest a book for his girlfriend. I rattled off a few titles by writer Nicolas Sparks and told them he writes very good love stories. In response, the girl said, “I don’t believe in love” and wanted me to show her other books.
“Since you don’t believe in love, what about reading this book”, I said cheekily, fishing out 10 Reasons to
Not Fall in Love from the shelf.
The boyfriend sprang to attention, like a mouse does when it senses the possible pounce of a cat, “Don’t show her those kinds of books, dai, we will breakup soon!”
The third category of reader is people who came to books late, mostly college-going students with a mofussil background or who are government officers. Having realised how important it is to read to get anywhere in life, they are very earnest about reading, but having not read much, they don’t know what to read and solicit suggestions from the bookseller. Suggesting books isn’t easy, as you never know what others would like. And your suggestion can backfire.
I once suggested In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a collection of short stories by Daniel Muenneddin to a lady. She came back the next day, said that she read a story which she simply hated and demanded that I replace it. Recently, a close friend requested me to send a book as a birthday gift to her friend on her behalf. Unsure of what book to send, I asked a bit about the lady whom my friend wanted to gift the book to. I was told that she liked romance and was in her mid-thirties. A career woman, working for an international organisation, she, I thought, was single by choice and decided to send her a romantic novel called How to be Single.
The woman took it is an affront and she stormed into the bookstore the next day. Goddess Kali incarnate, she said to the bahini at the counter, “How dare you send this book to me?” The bahini sheepishly told her that it was I who sent her the book. The woman then demanded to see me. Fortunately, I wasn’t in the bookstore that day to incur her wrath.
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