The Quest for the Delhi Book Place

I work in a book enthusiast's heaven. This is bad news for my work productivity levels, of course - the moment I get bored or tired I'm off.

I read often and bizarrely, which is (perhaps) why I've never had much luck finding a bookstore that satisfies all my needs. Amazon.com has the stock but not the experience. Buying books online is ok, but it's also utilitarian and even voyeuristic. There's something about handling, smelling and turning over a real book that makes the buying process more enjoyable. In fact, I could say that when I go to a bookstore, what matters isn't the book I eventually buy, but all the books I pass up. I'll hoard them in a dark little corner, read them piece by delightful piece, shelve the rejects, and take the chosen one to the counter. Sometimes I won't buy anything, but I'm okay with that.

So for the past few months I've been on my own personal vision quest for the perfect Delhi book place. (What is a bookplace? You'll soon see. Delhi profuses with literary offerings, the words 'libary' and 'bookstore' are sadly not up to describing them all. But also a "book place" is much more, in spirit and offerings, than just a "book store.") It's no mean distinction.

I started with the easy target, the vendors in the street. These guys are not high on customer service. They spread out sheets on the road on which they pile up towers of plastic-wrapped books. These copies are often bootleg, Xerox-ed and saran-wrapped, but the art of counterfeit has advanced so far that half the time you can't tell the difference. (Although I have heard apocryphal tales of people reaching a climatic juncture only to find - oh just punishment from God! - a missing page)

This dodgy, wrong-side-of-the-printing-press shopping has a certain charm. I browse the poetry of Rumi, Bill Bryson's "Short History of Nearly Everything," Paul Theroux. The street-sellers favor popular fiction, which makes sense when you're in the bootleg niche. But these trips end in sadness. The vendors quote me inflated prices and refuse to bargain. That's the downside to street-side buying: prices are never fixed. (Or rather, they're all fixed. And the fixing doesn't favor you.)

Next, my quest took me to Oxford book store. On a dull gray afternoon I trekked down to the Statesman House, a building that resembles an uneven red tooth. Entering this esteemed store requires going around the building, through a rickety gate and up an unlikely-looking stairway. There are very few signs, so the entire journey assumes a mystical air. (You're not sure where you're going, but you'll know when you get there.) I had to check my backpack at the door. This did not make me feel at home. Oxford is famous, but not - as I fast discovered - for their collection. I spent a fun hour browsing giant picture books about American fashion, and dug up a bilingual copy of the poems of J.L. Borges ($30! Forget it!) but in the end left empty-handed. I told my cousin about this afterward. "You're supposed to sit and have the coffee!" she lamented. Oh. It's a nice place, but it's not a book place.

Where would I find a bookplace that could satisfy all my desires, from the perverse to the religious? (Or are those the same?) Nothing came to mind. I explored a bookshop over a card store, where I found several cheap prints of English films and a novel by Philippa Gregory that I'd never read, but nothing that really arrested me. I went down to an academic bookstore where the books were piled up haphazard, without any organizational system whatsoever. Here I found a textbook on capital markets that I wanted, and at only Rs. 375 it was a bargain, but it was dirty. (Physically dusty and grimy - I had to wash my hands after)

I trekked all the way out to Darya Ganj, the used book market, but again, there was nothing. The patrons crowded in, rickshaws steamed by, the fiction selection was small and the nonfiction nonexistent.

In one memorable afternoon I explored the next-door American Center and British Library, both outlets of their respective governments (I believe). The American Center yawned with delightful titles by JK Galbraith and William Faulkner, and the carpets were clean enough to lounge on (important because the place was packed) The British Library, surprisingly, was a lot more bright and cheery - and therefore, to me, unexciting. Also, except for a series of academic essays on sexual size dimorphism, nothing grabbed me.

But yesterday, after four months of wandering, I finally found a literary home. Let me explain! It's not a home, in fact, it's far from perfect. It's a mesh of streetside and institution, bare and provisioned. It's a bit magical, too. From the outside, it looks like a little round booth, sort of like a tourist information booth outside a Metro. But look in the windows and it becomes obvious that like the Beast's castle, it has entire hidden rooms and caverns within.

All right, enough flowery description. For the nuts and bolts: fiction and nonfiction, short and prolix, literary and popular. Romance, economics, randomness. And the best thing is that this little round bookstall, famous throughout Delhi, is run by a guy who inherited the streetside shop from his father. Not only does he have a little bit of everything - Milan Kundera! Sophie Kinsella! Amartya Sen! - but if he doesn't have it, he'll make an inquiry. And he gives discounts. It's clear he loves books, and that he likes his customers ok, too.

Is there a coffeeshop? Hell, no. Can you lounge on the pavement? Not recommended. But he has a wealth of interesting books to catch my heart and my eye while I'm looking for The One That I Will Buy. And that process - the perfect browse - is really what this exercise was all about.