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Conversation with books
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For 30 years, Premier Bookshop in Bangalore has been the focal point of interest for book lovers. Its owner has guided generations of readers, says JANAKI NAIR, tracing the quaint charm of the shop.
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Haven for book lovers . . . the Premier Bookshop.
THE average 40-plus Bangalorean is prone to intolerable nostalgia, longing for the time before traffic, one way streets, or traffic stopping displays that are the staple of our democracy. A few, though their numbers are small and likely to diminish, may cast a wistful glance back at the 1970s when it seemed as if even this sleepy small town was stirred by the winds of change, and what if they blew in from metropolises much further afield. But even the most persistent whiner about how wonderful things were In Those Days will shudder to recall the time before Premier Bookshop. When it began in 1971 at its present location off Church Street, it was warmly embraced by a clientele that had for too long depended on the thin fare of other bookshops around, or on visitors from elsewhere to acquire a decent English language book. If the city had been well served by an excellent second hand bookshop, Select, for years, Bangalore's conversation with the freshly minted English book began with this important little institution in 1971.
Premier Bookshop joined two other ``institutions'' of the immediate vicinity in shaping my life as a reader and writer — Koshy's or Parade Cafe, and the British Council Library. Not all encounters in these worlds were pleasant or predictable. As a tender five-year-old, when my conversations with books first began, the limitless pleasures of the children's section in British Council kept me going for hours. But not for long: I was admonished via an elder sibling and strongly advised to stay away until I had learned to keep those conversations silent. So terrorised was I at the thought of being recognised as the noisy offender and then banished from all public libraries that I did not cross that threshold for a year, long after I triumphed over the unfortunate affliction that aligned eye and tongue.
The library remained my main source of books until years later when I began visiting T. Shanbagh's Premier bookshop off Church street. As a pretentious 18-year-old, then in awe of a certain IIT graduate who informed me that life was incomplete if I had not read Buckminister Fuller's Utopia or Oblivion? I made my purposeful way to Premier and purchased the book. With the cover facing outwards, I proceeded to Koshy's where it was important to be seen reading books that were guaranteed to still, if only momentarily, the conversation at tables around. That book has since made its way into a borrower's library, but I soon got wise to the ways of professional book borrowers.
Now, not all those who were 18 and had intellectual pretensions had the means to match their yearnings. Mr. Shanbagh was, and continues to be, most generous with credit, allowing you to walk away with books of your choice without demanding immediate payment or even an IOU. Perhaps he realised the importance of nurturing this pre-TV generations' love of the printed word; perhaps the dozens of other more saleable books made it possible to await delayed payment. Whatever the reasons, most of the foreign books could be paid for by young people across the city only over a period of several months, by which time the well thumbed volume may have had many readers, and perhaps an entire discussion group. But it was never Mr. Shanbagh's intention to reach beyond his self-description as a bookseller, though at least some early visitors who inadvertently asked for textbooks were soberly reminded they were in a bookshop.
My own patronage of his shop has been steadfast over these 27 years since that initial purchase, long after the pretensions fell away and a more serious engagement with books began. The seventies was a heady time, and Premier was well stocked with New Left Books; no one minded that they were to the right of its entrance. Feminist books, at first from elsewhere and then from within India, entered with panache and conquered the stacks to the left. A revolving bookcase from Picador soon took pride of place. Then the flood of Indian writing in English crowded Mr. Shanbagh, but not his cash register, into a tight corner.
All this alongside children's books, atlases, books on management, science, poems, novels and, yes, astrology. Mr. Shanbagh showed no preference for any one kind of writing; how often have I wished that he would stock fewer copies of such banal prose as Chicken Soup for the Soul. He would have no part in the insurrectionary fires stoked by the New Left Books any more than he would promote the Art of Living. In his own way, Mr. Shanbagh keeps from entering the thorny thickets of Taste. He has never been judgmental, and above all, has treated the purchaser of every small book with the same respect as the ones who rack up large bills.
For one who runs a bookshop, Mr. Shanbagh is a man of few words, and is rarely drawn into a long conversation. No wonder, at the felicitation organised by Ram Guha and Sujatha Kesavan to celebrate 30 years of Premier Bookshop he answered the fulsome praise of those present in the only way he knew. He handed out copies of the new Rupa edition of Rabindra Rachanabali to all those present!! It is his kind, if rather terse and gruff manner that has turned his shop into an excellent meeting place for people and ideas.
Over the years, he has guided me towards shelves and titles that he thinks would suit my current interests. After the New Left gradually disappeared from the front rows, I was for long steered towards every new book in women's studies, and then to history, until, just to sow some confusion, I asked for James Joyce's Ulysses. But he was unfazed, by this as by any other request, always keeping the regular patron's interests and eccentricities in his capacious memory as they entered his shop. To Mrs. Henry, he called out that she should not buy a certain book as a gift for someone who already had it; to Mr. Murthy, he called out a reminder to phone his wife. To a bank officer posted in the waterless district of Gulbarga, he sent monthly parcels of Grisham and Dick Francis. ``Meet me at Premier's,'' I know from personal experience, is a common enough way of postponing domestic disagreements. The numbers who have used Mr. Shanbagh's shop as a trysting place, where relationships and marriages may stand or sometimes fall, are legion.
Over the years, as the publishing world has burgeoned, and the reading public swelled, Premier Bookshop unfortunately remained the same size. Of late, any effusive welcoming a friend or engagement in heated argument ran the risk of bringing down a tottering pile of books. Books are today stacked three deep, and visitors now require expert assistance, but most important, Mr. Shanbagh's impeccable ``hard disk'' is pressed into action. I remember walking in to ask, on the off chance, whether he had any books by Richard Sennett; he dug deep into Row Three and produced the wonderful Flesh and Stone, which I have thus far guarded from professional borrowers.
Way back in 1971, Mr. Shanbagh did not realise, in his generous encouragement of indebted readers that he was sowing the seeds of ambition among many writers. A whole generation of those who lurked in the aisles, trying to read entire books standing up, have turned into good, indifferent and really accomplished writers. Yet, here too, Mr. Shanbagh does not allow sentiment to cloud the business of books, making no special allowances for the outpourings of those who were his oldest patrons. Writers approach Premier Bookshop with some trepidation: would the newly released book be in the front row, if only for a brief week, or consigned to the side, or worse, second row? Of the third and long buried row of books, the less questions are asked the better: it is certainly wrenching not to see the book out on the shelves at all.
Thirty years on, it is difficult to recall the time before Premier. Large tiled surfaces, pretty bookcases, deep armchairs, and piped in music have become the hallmark of many new bookshops in Bangalore, where cards and hand made stationary, as well as stuffed toys and calendars jostle for the same shelf space and attention. Book readings and launches notwithstanding, the assistants need the help of the computer to tell you which volumes are on the shelves. In Premier Bookshop, the groaning shelves have their own tale to tell. As his small table has disappeared under the piles of books which now prop up his receipt book, Mr. Shanbagh will have no truck with the computer, trusting only his little portable and his own ``hard disk.''
Premier Bookshop is a stubborn little island of charm and has remained the same during the very decades when Bangalore grew from city to metropolis. He has thus deprived the full time whiner of a fresh bout of nostalgia. The bloating of the city has grievously injured public manners, and bent even the gentlest of wills into brutal self-absorption. Yet here, for someone who nurtured a whole generation of impoverished readers whose ambitions outstripped their abilities, Mr. Shanbagh has kept the credit card wielding customer at bay, preferring to trust people in his own informal way, and allowing them to remember their dues.
No other bookshop quite matches up to Premier's quiet confidence in readers. In addition to the customary discounts, which I foolishly believed were only for the chosen few, not even the largest bag is prevented from entering the shop, and no CCTV keeps an eye on prospective pilferers. Even better, as far as I know, there is no bar on talking or reading aloud!
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