The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Each store is a treasure trove

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Wednesday, Jun 18, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Each store is a treasure trove

Deepika Arwind

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

VALUE PICK: Prospective buyers at the Bookworm Store in Brigade Road Cross.

Bangalore: One can spend hours scouring for books or just browsing through them in bookstores in and around Church Street. Even with the advent of giant bookstore chains such as Crossword, Landmark and Oxford, the customer-base of the smaller bookstores has not reduced. Select Bookstore in Brigade Road stands testimony to this as also the Premier Bookshop in Church Street.

Regular customers of Premier Bookshop, which was on the verge of shutting down a few months ago, continue to be loyal to it. T.S. Shanbhag, who runs the shop, is as content with it as he was in 1971 when it was opened. He says that despite the bigger, swankier bookstores, the number of customers to his shop has not decreased. “In fact, they have increased,” he says.

The steady stream of about a 100 customers a day keeps Premier going.

So too is the case with Blossom’s Bookstore, which sells old books. The exchange of old books adds to their collection every day. Begun on two floors in 2001, it now has a third floor which houses its non-fiction section, with an interesting collection of art and history books. Blossom’s sells almost all its books at a discount. So graphic novels with their niche readership, and which are imported from the U.S., still have regular buyers on account of the rebate offered. Mayi Gowda, who runs the bookstore, says: “About 100 to 150 customers come here every day, some of them looking for something specific and rare. Our collection is huge.” Obviously, its collection is superior to those of bigger bookshops. Reiterating this fact is Krishna who runs two stores of Bookworm, which also sell old books in Shringar Shopping Complex on Mahatma Gandhi Road and the other on Brigade Road. “People come and give us books that are not in publication anymore. You won’t be able to find them elsewhere,” said Mr. Krishna.

Although bookstores like Crossword and Oxford have adjoining cafes and host literary events, the smaller ones don’t seem least bit threatened.

Mr. Shanbhag says, “In these bigger bookstores, they look for books on the computer and are not sure of what they have. Here the staff knows everything about the books we keep.” True to his word, Mr. Shanbhag and his staff at Premier know the location of each book piled on precariously.

Yet, smaller bookstores have their share of problems. “We often have cases of missing books,” says Mr. Gowda of Blossom’s.

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