By Veena Venugopal: www.hinduonnet.com
AT Churchgate, a book lover can turn right and go to the air-conditioned confines of the Oxford book store, browse through a large collection of alphabetically indexed gleaming new books, pick a few and flip through them while sipping a steaming cup of Moroccan brew and watch the launch of Lion King on DVD all at the same time. Or else, he can turn left and buy a small piece of history.
The bookstalls lining the pavement of Mumbai - mostly from Churchgate to Fort — have been around for more than 50 years now. The first ones were set up closer to Flora fountain and as business and competition grew, they expanded and now occupy the entire sidewalk from Churchgate station, all the way to Flora fountain. Most of the booksellers, who squat these pavements today, are second and even third generation businessmen. Millions of people walk past these stalls everyday. For most, it is a part of the landscape but for a few hundreds, it is the place to take a welcome breather between office work and commuting.
According to Mr Santosh Kumar, who came to Mumbai from Bihar 6 years ago, as many as 2,000 people stop by and browse everyday. Out of this, only about 8-10 buy. In the nine years that he has been in business, Mr Kumar claims that sales has gone up by Rs 150 everyday, in comparison to the previous year. A large part of his clientele is students - looking for fiction. Popular authors are Jeffrey Archer and Frederick Forsythe.
Mr Rahul Singh, another vendor, who has been in the business for more than nine years, carries a more varied collection. He sells fiction, management, technology, fashion designing and even medical books. The profile of the buyers are varied - from a boutique owner in Boriville looking for tailoring books to law students looking for a cheap copy of `The Constitution of India'. Mr Singh has about 500 regular customers and he goes to great lengths to source specific books for them. Regular customers are also, the only ones given the privilege of bargaining. Others are often coerced to buy at the quoted rate.
The books at these stalls vary in price from Rs 20 to Rs 600. Mills & Boon romances and Archie comics (the biggest selling categories) sell for anything between Rs 20 and Rs 40, while hardbound coffee table books sell at the higher end of the range. Margins predictably are in the low-cost, but high-volume books and the sellers aren't likely to take the browser of high-value books seriously. "Most just want to look at the glossy pictures in these books," said Mr S. Hari, another vendor.
The nature of selling at these stalls is highly non-intrusive. Unlike, Fashion Street, there is no shouting or chanting or thrusting wares at potential customers' faces. They sit patiently waiting for the customer to finish checking out the books - sometime walking from one end of the sidewalk to the other - and making up their minds. The deal is sealed in a couple of minutes. This quiet nature, however, does not stop slinky browsers who copy designs/notes etc from these books, with no intentions of buying them, from being shooed away vigorously.
Most of the books are in fairly good quality. More than 90 per cent of the books are either bought from "raddies" (second-hand paper dealers) or sold to them directly by the owners of the books themselves. Some are bought new from book sales and exhibitions. The fascinating bit of the sourcing is the ability of the vendors to estimate what title sells and what doesn't, despite they not being English literate.
The more intriguing part of the whole transaction is that while large bookstores make the customer wait for a good 10 minutes while they key in data into a complicated software to check availability and location, in the pavement it is done in a couple of minutes with reliance on memory power and a bit of shouting across the road.
While big bookstore cafes offer 60 different kinds of tea, the roadside bookstall offers an ambience that is far superior. There is no joy greater than flipping through old books and reading not just the story that the author wrote but also many stories about previous owners and their lives. Sometimes it's an inscription on the front page about who owned the book and when or a birthday message or comments written in the margins. These books even house wedding invites, grocery lists and a medical store bill dated 1968.
The story of these books is not merely the story in these books - the more important stories are about who owned them and in what state of mind and spirits they had read them. Did the book speak to the reader? Did it give him a solution to a problem? Was it a friend during a long journey?
The stories that the buyers of these books weave in their heads are far more precious than the money spent in buying them and it is this aspect of the roadside books and booksellers that keep them alive and charming scores of years after they first appeared.
The bookstalls lining the pavement of Mumbai - mostly from Churchgate to Fort — have been around for more than 50 years now. The first ones were set up closer to Flora fountain and as business and competition grew, they expanded and now occupy the entire sidewalk from Churchgate station, all the way to Flora fountain. Most of the booksellers, who squat these pavements today, are second and even third generation businessmen. Millions of people walk past these stalls everyday. For most, it is a part of the landscape but for a few hundreds, it is the place to take a welcome breather between office work and commuting.
According to Mr Santosh Kumar, who came to Mumbai from Bihar 6 years ago, as many as 2,000 people stop by and browse everyday. Out of this, only about 8-10 buy. In the nine years that he has been in business, Mr Kumar claims that sales has gone up by Rs 150 everyday, in comparison to the previous year. A large part of his clientele is students - looking for fiction. Popular authors are Jeffrey Archer and Frederick Forsythe.
Mr Rahul Singh, another vendor, who has been in the business for more than nine years, carries a more varied collection. He sells fiction, management, technology, fashion designing and even medical books. The profile of the buyers are varied - from a boutique owner in Boriville looking for tailoring books to law students looking for a cheap copy of `The Constitution of India'. Mr Singh has about 500 regular customers and he goes to great lengths to source specific books for them. Regular customers are also, the only ones given the privilege of bargaining. Others are often coerced to buy at the quoted rate.
The books at these stalls vary in price from Rs 20 to Rs 600. Mills & Boon romances and Archie comics (the biggest selling categories) sell for anything between Rs 20 and Rs 40, while hardbound coffee table books sell at the higher end of the range. Margins predictably are in the low-cost, but high-volume books and the sellers aren't likely to take the browser of high-value books seriously. "Most just want to look at the glossy pictures in these books," said Mr S. Hari, another vendor.
The nature of selling at these stalls is highly non-intrusive. Unlike, Fashion Street, there is no shouting or chanting or thrusting wares at potential customers' faces. They sit patiently waiting for the customer to finish checking out the books - sometime walking from one end of the sidewalk to the other - and making up their minds. The deal is sealed in a couple of minutes. This quiet nature, however, does not stop slinky browsers who copy designs/notes etc from these books, with no intentions of buying them, from being shooed away vigorously.
Most of the books are in fairly good quality. More than 90 per cent of the books are either bought from "raddies" (second-hand paper dealers) or sold to them directly by the owners of the books themselves. Some are bought new from book sales and exhibitions. The fascinating bit of the sourcing is the ability of the vendors to estimate what title sells and what doesn't, despite they not being English literate.
The more intriguing part of the whole transaction is that while large bookstores make the customer wait for a good 10 minutes while they key in data into a complicated software to check availability and location, in the pavement it is done in a couple of minutes with reliance on memory power and a bit of shouting across the road.
While big bookstore cafes offer 60 different kinds of tea, the roadside bookstall offers an ambience that is far superior. There is no joy greater than flipping through old books and reading not just the story that the author wrote but also many stories about previous owners and their lives. Sometimes it's an inscription on the front page about who owned the book and when or a birthday message or comments written in the margins. These books even house wedding invites, grocery lists and a medical store bill dated 1968.
The story of these books is not merely the story in these books - the more important stories are about who owned them and in what state of mind and spirits they had read them. Did the book speak to the reader? Did it give him a solution to a problem? Was it a friend during a long journey?
The stories that the buyers of these books weave in their heads are far more precious than the money spent in buying them and it is this aspect of the roadside books and booksellers that keep them alive and charming scores of years after they first appeared.
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