ENDPAPER
Just browsing
PRADEEP SEBASTIAN
NETRA SHYAM
THE fine art of browsing. You didn't think all it took was hanging around in a bookshop with time to kill, did you? You have to look at each book carefully — not casually — internalise the contents, then stow it away in your mind for future reference. I'm kidding. Browsing is more like a habit, a compulsion. What it takes is an ability to forget everything around you, even yourself, when you see a book you're interested in. To be seduced by a book. I have to duck into a bookstore when I see one.
The importance of the chase
However, I know friends who refuse to step into a bookshop if they aren't carrying enough money to buy a book. They're afraid of finding something they want and not having enough money to buy it. I, on the other hand, feel more compelled to be in a bookstore when I don't have money. I'm interested in the chase. My longing for a book increases when I can't buy it right away. Few things can match the intense anticipation of returning the next day, or a week later, to buy it. All the way to the bookstore you're wondering if it's gone or if it's still there. If the book has been bought, then there's the excitement of the hunt. Where else can you find it, and how soon?
The professional browser
You can always tell a casual browser from a serious one. Once he's entered the bookstore, he'll head straight to the new arrivals shelf, scan the row quickly, and then hurry to a store assistant to ask for the book everyone is talking about. Worse, he doesn't even look around — he just asks the bookstore owner what's new and noteworthy. Nothing spoils the pleasure of spending time in a bookshop for the frequent browser than finding a book too quickly. The find has to come at the end of the search — even midway is acceptable. But to run smack into a book you definitely want to own ... leaves you feeling a little snubbed. The inveterate browser has her methods. Nothing is more amateurish than to browse aimlessly all over the bookstore. The professional browser will head straight to her favourite shelf. Once there, she'll make herself comfortable (if it's one of those nice bookshops that provide chairs — or she'll just make do with a quiet corner), arrange a pile of books next to her, and then, and only then, will she begin browsing.
At the end of it, she may not even buy any of them: the point is to browse for the sake of browsing. Not too different from window-shopping: you look (a feast for the mind), you touch, you ask for the price, you walk out. That's how you get the urge to buy the lot of them out of your system. Until next week, that is.
Sensuous experience
It's also a sensuous thing, this touching and fondling and smelling of books. I can't resist smelling old books — specially comics — in used bookstores. It makes you nostalgic for childhood and gives you back the memory of your earliest encounter with books: the feel and smell of paper, the taste of words and sentences. And what a sheer pleasure it is today to just look at books. Book jackets nowadays are an art form, and browsing through a bookstore is a feast for the eyes. In some cases the jacket turns out to be the best part of the book. It has become a particular pleasure to look at and touch the books put out by Penguin India: both, their paperback imprint and their hardcover imprint, Viking. Bena Sareen and her team from Penguin's graphic department who work on cover art and design use bold, striking colours, combining it with elegant, subtle typographical work.
One lifetime is not enough
Most of my friends prefer bookshops as meeting places; that way you don't have to wait if the other is late, you just keep browsing. "The tingle of anticipation that pervades all over you as you enter the store cannot be matched by any other feeling," says Malathy Sundaram, a devout browser. "I can almost feel the books extending their arms to embrace me and begging me and daring me in turns to get to know them better. In an antiquarian bookshop, the possibilities for browsing are endless: out of print authors and centuries-old laboured scholarship bearing down upon you in solemn silence. But browsing always leaves me a little sad — there's so much you still don't know — is one lifetime enough for a real browser?"
pradeepsebastian@hotmail.com
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