| Deccan Herald, Sunday, June 29, 2003 |
The book still rules
Harry Potter notwithstanding, it’s been a parade of pretenders: the television, the Net, cineplexes, video games. Has this blitzkrieg killed the love of books in us? Sheila Kumar does a reconnoitre of the situation and brings in a clear verdict 
Is India reading? What a no-brainer question, right?
Of course India is reading: it wants to know just what Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort are up to in Rowling’s fifth-in-the-series book, ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ which has already sold a million copies worldwide. Point is, many of those men/women/children clutching the heavy tome to their chests have been drawn to the book only because of all the hype. Most will read it, but many will buy it to stack alongside the other four Potternamas. So. What lies beyond books on a child wizard? Is India really reading much, when all day Net surfing has become affordable? When DJ Whatsisname is playing house music at the pub on a balmy evening. When you have to catch the latest Harry Potter (here we go again!) saga at the theatre or the latest episode of ‘The West Wing’ on TV. Not when your days are so stretched you can barely fit all your activities into 24 hours. And certainly not when books have become so prohibitively expensive. Er… not so fast, dear reader. Truth to tell, the book still rules. That’s what a cross-section of people across the country, book publishers/ book sellers/readers all say, with fervour, with emphasis, with quiet conviction. There are many who believe that a good lending library is manna for the readers. Denizens of Bangalore, Ernakulam, Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Kolkata and Chennai certainly put the Eloor Lending Library (all these cities have a branch) right at the top of the list. Unlike most garage libraries, the Eloor Libraries stock as much soul food for the serious reader as for the magazine-philes and Mills & Boon addicts. The man behind the chain of libraries is a retired passport officer with an abiding passion for books (of course) named Luiz John. This is Mr John on the topic under discussion: “Eloor has not been experiencing any dearth of readers. The volume of our lending doesn’t warrant any such statement.” Then again, the love of reading has never been quite the norm for the general public, states Mr. John, reminiscing about the time when his father used to deposit him in front of the soda maker’s shop in the village; the soda maker doubled as the local librarian. “As a small boy I used to wait respectfully until the soda maker uncle would detach himself from the soda machine and take me to the panchayat library room two shops away. Then as now, books were a visceral need in me.” Ultimately, says Luiz John, book buffs have a way of hanging out together, perpetually aggravating each other's craving for books. “Do you know one reason why books will endure”, he asks, then answers the question: “It is a habit that gets handed down, generation to generation. A genuine reader infects at least two people in his lifetime. The pure enjoyment that one gets out of a good book is so great, one must talk about it to somebody.” The articulate Vidya Virkar, daughter of the man who started the legendary Strand bookstore in Mumbai, T.N. Shanbhag, has been helming the Bangalore branch of Strand for eight “giddy, amazing and rewarding” years now. Ask her if people are still reading and she says, “Oh, very much so and its on the rise.” Her take on a rising readership despite other in-one’s-face distractions, is an interesting one: “It’s because the dotcom bubble burst.
That crash has directly impacted readership profiles. When
the euphoria vaporized, people had this urge to get back to basics, to get their fundamental precepts right…and what better way to do it than to return to the world of books?” Ask Vidya what people are reading and she says, “The whole spectrum of books. It’s really a case of different strokes for different folks.” She rues the fact that translations of regional writings aren’t given enough publicity, which is why the wonderful works of many an author in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Kerala or Bengal languish largely unknown and unread. M. Vijayalakshmi, the librarian at Sahitya Akademi, Delhi says, “There are no reliable statistics but going by the general response all over India to book fairs, I’d say yes, there is an uptrend in reading. Whether it gets translated into book sales I don’t know but the reading habit has not waned. What are people reading? Well, at all book fairs, the most crowded stalls are those that sell self-development, self-empowerment or self-improvement books.” Shalini Rose, Manager at the Bookworm shop in Delhi begs to differ. She feels the market for books has gone down, sales have gone down, resulting in some bookstores in the Capital shutting down. She says that, by and large, the bulk of people who buy from Bookworm are foreigners, and the war and SARS mean less tourists. Those who read, says Shalini, pick up tomes on literary criticism, management books, religion, areas the Bookworm specializes in. K.K.S. Murthy of Bangalore’s Select Bookshop is, of course, a veteran in the book world and any conversation with him must needs take one into a fascinating labyrinth of tomes. Are people reading? “More and more,” asserts Mr. Murthy. “There are takers for just about every type of serious books: philosophy, literature, the classics. I have had youngsters in recently, asking for sets of William Shakespeare as well as Shopenhauer.” Mr. Murthy finds this sharp spurt in readers a somewhat recent phenomenon, and indirectly attributes it to the influx of people from outside states, regions where the love of the printed word has been part of the local culture. The Select Bookshop has, in the last 58 years of its existence, acquired a steady clientele, one who isn’t easily lured away by the power of the mouse or the idiot box. In fact, Mr. Murthy has a ‘Wanted’ list he carries with him to all the book exhibitions and fairs he attends, scouting out rare books and editions for Select customers back in Bangalore. “Yes, books are expensive,” says Mr. Murthy. “However, when hardbacks at sold to us booksellers at a later date, at discounted prices which some of us (me certainly) further mark down, then buying good books becomes affordable. I earnestly wish the big publishers would routinely sell the leftover stocks of hardbacks to us rather than return them to source. This way, almost every reader would be able to buy books.” Is books selling lucrative, you ask and he smiles. “Well, I have heard my father (the redoubtable Mr. Rao, founder of Select in 1945) being asked how he can possibly see to the needs of his family, running a small bookstore where at any given time one would find just 2-3 people browsing around. And he’d say that he certainly wasn’t running Select to pass time or as a hobby. The sales from books at Select fed, clothed, educated his family, all the while keeping us in close contact with what we love so much, the books.” Ms Veena Marthandam of Danai Bookstore, Khar, Mumbai reports that book sales have more or less hit a plateau for the past few years, and that people are reading a lot of New Age books, spiritual and self- help books. Gangarams, Bangalore, is now more than a bookstore, what with sections dealing with stationery, cards, gifts, etc. This has been a natural progression says N Gangaram, and not necessarily due to a dip in the sale of books. His son, Prakash Gangaram elaborates, “Let’s face it, a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica is beyond the reach of most people. The same on CD format isn’t. So, while stocking the CDs, we are just helping to widen the habit of acquiring knowledge.” Both the Gangarams are vehement that books sales aren’t in any state of decline. “There is such a wide variety of books being published and each generation churns out more and more book lovers,” opines the elder Gangaram. Mr. T .S Shanbhag’s Premier Bookshop has willy-nilly become an institution in Bangalore. You walk into the store where books are piled precariously and yet within seconds of asking for some little- known tome, Mr Shanbhag has pulled it out for you. Book signings, book promos, author readings, all seem just that bit redundant at Premier. Asked if India is reading, the mild-mannered Shanbagh says tellingly, “Books sales have gone up. Good books will always sell and despite all other distractions, there will always be readers. If people can’t afford hardbacks, they wait for the books to come out in paperback and then buy them.” N Obeid of Chennai’s Landmark Shop concedes that sometimes one has to lure would- be book buyers in, with displays of multi-media products. However, he too avers that books sales are going nowhere but up. “It’s been a gradual rise,” he says, “There are more writers and more books on just about every subject under the sun…and of course, there are more people reading.” And he for one, isn’t going to knock book readings, author signings, promos: “They help bring more readers into the fold.” Mr Nazim Bharwani of Horizon Bookstore, Vile Parle, Mumbai says that book sales have gone up, especially of management books. It is a lucrative business, he reports happily. T. N. Shanbhag, the man who is Strand, Mumbai, laughs at the notion that there could be a decline in reading and readers. Choosing his words with care, he says, “Without exception, inspite of all the doomsday-sayers, the reading habit remains, will remain, and will only improve. Most people have a thirst for knowledge that only the printed word can satisfy. Today, with purchasing power having gone up, they get to slake that thirst.” In the 34 years of running Strand, Mr. Shanbhag has seen many a luminary come and go into his shop, and talks of how he’d staked all on instinct when, some decades ago, it came to stocking the translation of an unknown work called Dr Zhivago. The gamble paid off (as one suspects all such gambles of this man who knows books pay off) and soon Pandit Nehru was ordering copies to gift friends. Mr. Shanbhag is scathing about new trends in publishing and stocking. “The trade has been degraded with the flooding of mediocre books and bestsellers,” he rues. “Today books are a commodity and not a cultural product. The informed booksellers have gone into the woodwork, only traders run the show now.” If Mr. Shanbhag the effortless raconteur, says he doesn’t ‘vibrate’ in quite the same way as other bookstore owners, well, his clientele is different too. This man deals with the classes, and doesn’t carp how few they are. “Progress,” he states, “can be ascribed to the 1 per cent of population, not the 99 percent of the masses.” His one per cent, then, are on the eternal learning curve and that’s just the way ‘Mr. Strand’ would have it. “No one reading these days?” he chuckles in disbelief. This is what Ravi Shankar, writer and Deputy Editor at India Today says: “I don’t think dumbing down has affected any serious readers. It’s only because publishing has become such a prolific industry that there are more Georgette Heyers and Kusum Sawhneys on bookshop shelves. Donatella Versace may collect 17th century Chinese boiserie and live in a Milanese palazzo but her favorite author is Jackie Collins. There you go.” Madhu Wal, Head of the English Department at The Lawrence School Lovedale in Ooty has this to say: “When I was in School in the Sixties, reading was perhaps the only recreation available to us, besides the occasional movie and the radio. Unfortunately, today reading is fast becoming a dying habit. Young children prefer spending time on the Internet. With cable network and film CD's being so readily available, they have little interest in reading good books.” Renuka Chatterjee, Commissioning Editor at Roli Books, New Delhi, has her own take on reading and readers. “Writers and books have been getting much more attention from the media; writers are treated in much the same way as sports stars and film stars, in terms of media space. This has generated more interest from the public. Also, there is much more interest now in Indian fiction.” While averring that people still read, Renuka says this has not made much of an impact on sales. “People talk more about the latest book but unfortunately, don't put their money where their mouth is, at least to the extent that publishers would like.” On the media blitz, she says, “I don't think TV/Net have really killed the reading habit to a significant extent.
People who like books, and want to read, will opt
for a book instead of a TV programme, just as they did before. I wouldn't say there is a preference for lighter stuff, either: most Indian writers in English who have done really well, have written literary novels, not pulp, i.e. Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy, Upmanyu Chatterjee, Vikram Chandra. The only Indian pulp fiction writer to date who has made it big is Shobhaa De.” Asha Nehemiah, a writer of children’s books based in Vellore, says: “I think the Harry Potter phenomenon has got more kids back to books and reading.” However, she admits that where once curling up with a good book was the only alternative to boredom when the weather got too hot to play outdoors, today kids have a variety of choice.
“So, unless you offer them reading material that is
more exciting than the other choices available, they're not going to read. I feel the love for reading has to be nurtured carefully in the generation of young readers today. Whereas twenty years ago, I knew hundreds of bookworms (both adults and children) whose first choice of entertainment would be reading, today I know maybe five! I think children have to be systematically introduced to good books and efforts have to be made by schools and parents to provide them with a rich and varied reading fare.“ Jayanth Kodkani, Bangalore- based journalist and committed reader says succinctly, “Just like the information glut hasn't prevented the serious and discerning reader from finding what he likes to read, books find their fans. It’s just that the choice is varied now.” Kodkani laments the demise of the eclectic reader. “The voracious reader, whose eclectism arose from his attitudes/scholarship/world view, appears to be vanishing. He (this vanishing man) read books on French wine, World War II history, avant garde poetry. Very few people read books on many subjects and in many genres now…there's just no time!” So. Is India reading? Let me put it this way: the part of India that comprises readers, is still reading. More than ever.
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