Closed Chapter

And oh, the sheer pleasure of browsing. Here’s Busybee, Bombay’s favourite middle-class chronicler, on the pavement bookshops: ‘‘I am not sure whether the hawkers contribute to Flora Fountain’s ambience or impair it. Perhaps, without them, the place would not look like the centre of the world; it would look like the central square in any other town, with a decorative fountain in the middle. It is the hawkers who breathe life into it and provide its atmosphere…

‘‘And there is one particular group of hawkers who should never leave the place—the booksellers, with old and new books scattered on the pavements and parapets like autumn leaves. One of the ultimate pleasures in life is browsing among these books on a lazy Sunday afternoon.’’

Despite the limited space—just a few square feet for each of the stalls—the books were piled up in ingenuous ways so as to display each title, even if only partially. The vendors had devised a set of low wooden platforms on which they piled the books so that no book touched the ground at any point.

Books, to these sellers, were not only their livelihood but also articles filled with wisdom, the paraphernalia of learning, and therefore to be treated with respect. Blue plastic sheets that protected the books at night were used to create shade in the daytime. Under these, the vendors sat around and waited for customers through the day, and usually late into the evenings.

In the evenings, there would be a special festivity in the air, with yellow marigolds festooned around some of the ropes and agarbattis burning smokily in front of the books. Even the space behind the bookstacks was optimally used: with the wooden boards slanting at 45 degree angles to the wall, there was a little space at the back where personal items like lunch dabbas were stored, and where the vendors would sometimes stretch out for an afternoon nap.

The vendors were aware not only of titles, but also of associations. If you picked up the first volume of Simone de Beauvoir’s autobiography, the bookseller would find the other two volumes for you; for a Sartre, he offered a Camus as well. From the time you first appeared on their pavement looking for Philip Roth, they soon organised an entire bookshelf for you: Zuckerman, Kepesh and all. At the same time, they still tried to sell Portnoy as soft-porn.

There was something for everyone: stacks of old magazines—National Geographic, Simplicity, and wilting Ikea catalogues—and textbooks, computer books, children’s books. The displays ranged from Gandhi to Harry Potter, several cookbooks, a children’s encyclopaedia, and even a Lonely Planet India guide.

Old books offer that certain something that new ones, fresh from the publishers, haven’t yet acquired: the patina of age, the gravitas of study, the affectionate inscriptions, the personal marginalia, the little slips of paper or the photograph tucked into the pages. The specialness of just having been read several times over.

And browsing itself is such a pleasure: not just at the pavements, but at the railway station bookstalls, the A H Wheelers where one could grab a newspaper or a bestseller with a sense of desperation before the train started.

I couldn’t imagine setting off on a train journey without masses of stuff to read. And now, in a busy city, even at the traffic signals: like the Haji Ali signal, where little Birju offers me, week after week, the new issues of wat he calls the ‘‘magic-djinns’’.

And they are magic djinns, all of them, these pages filled with words that transport us to other universes. Public streets are spaces for everyone in the city. Given Bombay’s harsh daily routines of north-south train travel, the bookstalls at Fountain allowed commuters and students to pick up something to read for the long bus or train journey home. The roadside book culture was actually an organic response to the everyday reading needs of commuters.

Recycling books, circulating them in the community, offering them for sale as well as for return, the pavement bookstalls were as much a part of the heritage district as Flora Fountain itself, and the silent, gracious stone facades of the ageing buildings of the area.

The bookstalls were part of the living tradition of this great city. We shall miss them.