By Savitri Narayanan
“Where did you get this from?”
The Railway Children on the tea table in the verandah was a pleasant surprise! Had been looking for a copy for a while, didn’t know where else to look for and the search was still on!
Tell me, where did you find this?” I asked again while nostalgically leafing through its pages.
“In that bookstore”
“Which bookstore?”
“I just told you! That Book Store,” my friend laughed aloud.
Before long one morning we drove down the lanes of Defence Colony in south Goa and reached a gate which said, ‘We’re open, come in!’
Someone came down from the front verandah and showed us in.
Like any bookstall or library, here too bookshelves lined the wall and racks with neatly stacked and labelled books created browsing spaces in the room.
‘Yet there’s something different, what’s it?’ was the thought that kept coming up in the mind as we followed the owner. There was an air of familiarity, a feeling of lingering warmth in the air. One felt a sense of ownership unlike in some spotlessly clean, meticulously arranged and neatly labelled interiors of an upmarket bookstore.
The labels on the bookshelves caught one’s eye. Unlike the standard cataloguing systems generally followed, here the labels had no numbers or codes but only words! ‘Picture Books’, ‘Quiet Companions’, ‘Yes, you guessed’, ‘Best-sellers’, ‘Take your pick’ and so on.
She seemed to read my thought when she responded, “In view of digitalisation and the social media’s entry into one’s daily life, things have changed drastically and rapidly in all areas including one’s reading habits, so here we are, a step ahead!”
The cosy corner space overlooking the window had a small sofa and a few chairs. We settled down and she continued her line of thought.
“These days people are clearer as in they know what they want to read; those like us help them get what they are looking for, that’s all.”
“How did you think of this name? Striking it is!”
“No, it’s not my original idea! Not at all!”, she was quick to clarify, “‘That Book Woman’ is one of my all-time favourite books; it’s about the work of the Pack Horse Librarians who made books accessible to the public. The setting is up in the mountains of Kentucky in America and the time zone is during President Roosevelt’s time. It’s amazing how, in the 1930s the ‘Book Women’ carried books on a horse or a mule and distributed them to individuals, to read and exchange! A mobile library happening a century ago!
“I was born and grew up in Bengal where books were so much part of our daily life,’ Ms Barkha Sharda, the owner remembers. Subsequently, when she shifted base to Delhi and then Mumbai, books and bookshops continued to be part of life. Then came the years when Barkha frequently travelled to Goa to collect her research-related facts and do surveys.
A decade ago, she made Goa home. Due to the lack of an efficient public transport system combined with the fact that she didn’t drive, those years Barkha travelled around by slow buses on various long routes which in turn gave her an opportunity to see the nooks and corners of Goa! Somehow, books were not part of daily life for a common person!
“This is our humble attempt to create a friendly space where one gets connected to books.”
A cat came in and sat close to Barkha. From behind the rack came out a small dog! It looked like a street dog but was clean and had a name tag.
“No worries, meet our pet cat Paper and our neighbour’s dog, Toto,” laughed Barkha, “Friendly, aren’t we? Families often come with not only their children but pets too knowing that all are welcome. The pets mind their business, we mind ours!”
“How long have you been running this bookstore?”
“It started as an online venture a few years ago. We were still getting on track when the lockdown happened, which in a way gave us a push. We created and connected through online groups. Lots of book talk happened, more people got looped into reading and more books changed hands! The monthly event of The Book Club also helps booklovers to converge here,” Barkha concludes.
Apart from Barkha and Ryle who are fully engaged in the bookshop, there are several volunteers. “We are pleased to be the link between the readers and the books,” she says, “And we do enough groundwork to ensure that our customer gets exactly what one has in mind.”
An interesting example was this grandmother who lived in Guwahati who wished to gift a story book to her granddaughter in Goa for her birthday. It turned out that the six year old had a pet cat whom she adored. The picture book about cats that she received as gift won her heart. The parents continued to be connected with the bookstore, so much so that when they got a puppy, they requested books on dogs too. By ‘word of mouth’ publicity they have clients all over India. There’s pride in the voice about the effort they take to identify the source, order the book and deliver it anywhere in India by India Post.
Thus, slowly they are becoming a dependable source for many to get the right book.
So, what are the challenges?
“It’s not a challenge, it’s a passion.” Ryle and the volunteers nod in agreement. “It is said that there’s a book for every person, one has to find it and we’re here to help in the process! It’s a pleasure to find people getting hooked to books. When someone walks in to browse around and picks up books saying ‘want to gift it to a friend’, we can sense that most probably, it will stay in their own bookshelf.”
Laughter fills the room as we part ways knowing that we’ll be back soon, may be with a friend or two!
(Savitri Narayanan is a retired educationist at present in Goa. A mother and grandmother, loves reading, writing and travelling.)
