Tags
books, bookstores, bookworm, childhood, growing up, india, love, nostalgia, reader, travel
Recently, the Landmark bookstore in Chennai, India finally issued a notice stating their intentions to close down the shutters after almost 30 years in the business. Although I have no connection whatsoever with that particular store, having never lived in Chennai myself, the news about any bookstore closing down leaves me feeling quite nostalgic about my own little book havens that I have found in every city/state/country/continent that I happened to be in. For me, books have always been a form of escape. They help distract me from my loneliness during nights when I’m away from my closest people; they serve as places I can go to to curb my boredom; they also serve a larger purpose in my life which I can’t quite put my finger on yet. They’re a part of my world which always travels with me in a sense, because all bookstores manage to evoke the same sense of comfort and warmth and a feeling of being “my own” no matter where in the world it is. I can start off by perusing through the stacks of second hand books that line the streets of Connaught Place in Delhi and quite comfortably continue my book hunt in the Kinokuniya bookstore in the malls at Singapore. The top floor of the Illini Union bookstore in my college at Champaign smells exactly the same as any one of those multiple bookstores that are squished together in Park Street, Calcutta that have been there probably since the colonial times.
I like to imagine that all the book stores in the world know each other- there is definitely a sense of camaraderie there and if ever, in the figment of my imagination of course, they were to meet one another it would be like old friends, having shared similar experiences- be it providing the very first Enid Blytons to young, excited readers or having the Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys flying off their shelves for the pre-teen crowd. They must have all experienced the thrill of those long long queues outside their doors at midnight for the latest Harry Potter book release of the year. All the book signings and excerpt readings from established authors must have taken place in their little reading rooms. They must have all participated in the birth of new and upcoming artists and devoured the creative energy emanating from all new releases. On the flip side, they have also all had to progress with the changing times and witness the introduction of electronic reading stations in their inner reading rooms, along with the advent of an electronic filing system which made it easier to find what the customer was looking for but simultaneously robbed them of the chance to stumble upon new authors and exciting novels while hunting through the stacks by oneself. And now, in the day of the Kindle and the iPad they must have all had to witness the slow demise of their city’s reading culture. Sure, there is still a trickle of the old crowd who come in for a taste of the good old days, but there are fewer children in their midsts now. The ones who do happen to come in are looking for textbooks and reading material assigned by their schools. Gone are the days of reading for pleasure as the kids learn to work their way around technology. And this leads to the drawing down of shutters such was the case with Landmark. That definitely wasn’t the first bookstore to shut down and it won’t be the last. But hopefully, there will come a day when I am walking down the streets of a new city and I turn a corner and find a small friendly bookstore tucked away in between cafes and malls and it will be like picking up from where I left off.. Now, was it the Park Street bookshop or Walden, Hyderabad? I doubt it will matter. It never does.