Reading and the City: Match-making
Do we select books or do books select us?
Most of you have likely bought books from Amazon or similar platforms for nearly two decades. Based on your searches, buying habits, and all the technology that Amazon and other tech giants claim to be perfecting, they should ideally be well-positioned to suggest a carefully curated selection of books for us. However, what they end up pushing are often books you'd rather keep at arm's length: self-help titles and the latest Hindutva propaganda, which has somehow found its way into the minds of endogamous Savarna inbreds, graduating from reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
This is where good bookshops and secondhand book markets make a difference. They offer a space to ponder that age-old question: Do you choose a book, or does a book choose you?
You’re most likely to choose a book online, but in a bookshop, several factors conspire to help a book choose you.
I enjoy browsing through the shelves of bookshops, whether alone or with family and a few friends. But there have been times when I’ve explored a second-hand book market or shop with a group of people—friends and strangers who have come together for a walk. My friends Aslam (aka Bombay Ka Shaana of Hallu Hallu) and Pravin Swapbook Subbu organised these walks in Mumbai’s Kings Circle, Matunga CR and a shop in Pestom Sagar, Chembur West. The delight on people’s faces, when they find a book, or several, that resonate with their interests is always priceless.
Here are a few pictures for the readers out there. Happy browsing.
Books are a weapon in the hands of the religious farts - this heavy one, funded by the Bush family will make a good one.
Relics from the days before the internet.
Take a break.
Back to books and more.
Meet a bookseller - Hitler Nadar of Kings Circle.
Varma (I hope I got the name right) who mans the bookshop next to Mysore Concerns.
That’s all, folks!
Happy Reading.
Some 40 years back when I was working in Bombay, my sundays and holidays would be spent scourging the used book stalls along the wall of VT terminus, the Central Post Office and extending right in to Fort. You have tickled those memories. Nothing to beat a bookstore or a corner shop. I detest the likes of Amzs and Flips. Lovely story.
Not an avid book reader yet but trying hard to accomplish the bug in me to read up more of pulp books compared to online reading, the most fantastical part is the lure for browsing the captivating titles, the color tones, the cover art works, the varied languages, the torn pages, the names and scribbles, evoking an enticement to timeless titles, oh such beauties!
A bit long time haven't strolled down the hitlers bay, where he always greets you with warm heart and treats you with filter coffee, and all the sharings that happen between us. I must visit him soon.