Black Coffee & White Tiger

It is a weekday afternoon and a group of people has already gathered at the Mocha coffee bar at DLF Phase 4,Gurgaon. The place is hopping with youngsters,and over the din of idle banter,one can find people sitting at large tables,sipping summer cocktails and reading books. The combination of black coffee and White Tiger is thanks to a well stocked bookstore called Scribbles,on the ground floor of the colourful three-storey building,which offers novels,children’s books,self-help books,and titles on wildlife,management and defence,apart from a whole shelf dedicated to Stephenie Meyer.

“The aim is to provide a literary platform to book lovers in Gurgaon,” says Divya Arora,the owner of the bookstore who also runs Natraj Publishers that specialises in books on environment,military history and defence. Scribbles opened shop early this year after Mocha’s Riyaz Amlani approached Arora with the concept. Also,in the offing is another bookstore at Mocha Bar in Defence Colony.

A five-rack shelf running along the length of the wall greets you with novels by Jhumpa Lahiri,Vikram Seth,Arvind Adiga and Candace Bushnell,apart from Nandan Nilekani’s Imagining India,Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers,futurist Alvin Toffler’s War and Anti-War and Leil Lowndes’s How to Talk to Anyone. “Some of the management and self-help books are doing well. “The place is open till midnight. The sales pick up in the evening when the office crowd rolls in for a coffee and ends up picking something for reading,” says Arora,32.

The kiddies section in another corner has the usual suspects,Tintin,Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series and Roald Dahl series besides Harry Potter,while Swiss horror master Thomas Ott’s graphic novels are widely picked up by adults

So far,the Mocha book club has 200 members and the activity calendar is already buzzing with readings by William Dalrymple,Namita Gokhale and Advaita Kala.

(Contact: 26495649. Open from 9.30 am to midnight)