By Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, MD

Being an avid book lover, the only thing I buy most and certainly very regularly, are books. For me, despite my half a dozen or so other hobbies, there is nothing that can match the joy of buying a book, new or old and then immediately sitting down in a secluded place to relish it, undisturbed.

That place need not be the proverbial book-lover’s ‘cosy corner’ and so it can be my verandah, my living room, my bedroom, my workplace, after I finish my work or even my car, while I wait most patiently, for my family members to finish their shopping and other chores in the marketplace. The longer they take to do this, the happier I am, which may seem more than a little surprising to most normal men. Yes, I never once call them up to ask what is taking them so long!

Doing this, shuts out the rest of the world to me and I enter into a trance-like state, where my book and I alone exist, while time stands still. There cannot be an ecstasy greater than this to me and I’m sure that most book-lovers will only agree with me on this. Even if I have just ten minutes of time, I never lose a chance to walk into a book shop and spend at least an hour there!

But I’m happiest in shops that sell old books. The place and their wares have their own unique charm, with their own unique smell, wafting across, that makes me feel light-headed.

Just last week while I was in New Delhi, I was able to visit two of the most iconic book shops at the Khan Market there. One of them was Faqir Chand and Sons which was started in the year 1951 by a man of the same name, but which had been well established since the year 1931 at Peshawar in Pakistan. The other place I went to, just a little further down, was Bahrisons, which was started in 1953 by Balraj Bahri Malhotra, who came to Delhi as a 19-year-old refugee, after the partition.

What is iconic about these two places and what makes them unique now, are things that I would like to write about, maybe next weekend.

Like most other people who buy almost everything online these days, I buy a good many of my books online too and my visits to book shops have therefore become less frequent. But there is nothing like going to a book shop in person and selecting what you want, after leisurely browsing through the titles there. That way you are able to make much wiser choices because very often the title of a book and even the reviews about it, will fail to give you a clear idea of whether you’ll like it enough to have it in your collection.

I have, on many occasions, very eagerly or even greedily bought a good many books online going just by their reviews, only to regret it later. That is where book shops have an edge over the online business of books, although they just cannot match the very low prices that prevail there because of the low overheads and establishment costs. That is exactly why ideally, I still prefer to visit a book shop and buy the books that attract me from there, although I invariably end up paying more for them than what I would have done if I had bought them online.

This I do especially when I am buying a book for the first time, from an unknown author whose views and style of writing I am not familiar with. I have another very odd habit of buying a book as a keepsake and remembrance of any new place I visit and so the first destination when I reach there, much before I start my sight-seeing, is a book shop!

This perhaps is a family trait or more appropriately an idiosyncrasy, because I certainly seem to have inherited it from my parents. My late father used to pick up a book from every place he would visit and inscribe its name and the date on it, before writing his own name. Most of his books and mine too are thus adorned. My mother too, being a book-lover, still has the same habit. Actually, she is a step ahead in ensuring that she has a keepsake, even from the many small places which she visits and which are completely bereft of book shops. That is why, in addition to books with their owners’ autographs, our home is full of trays, plates, pots and pans, with dates and names of places engraved on them.

And that is also why at any given time, I may be eating from a plate bought in Ooty, something that has been cooked in a pot that was bought in Koppa and served in a bowl that was bought in Honnavar and topping it off by drinking my coffee from a mug that was picked up in a mall in New Delhi!

Coming back from pots and pans to books, I have been noticing over the past few days that the Maximum Retail Price (MRP) marked on books, seems to be varying greatly from shop to shop and this is something that I have seen only in very large cities. This used to be the trend only in book shops at airports and high-end hotels, where not just books but also everything else has steeply hiked prices which is understandable, considering the very high costs payable as rent for the very posh selling spaces.

Here too, this hike is very cleverly done in a perfectly legitimate way, by specially procuring goods marked with the suitably hiked MRPs printed on them. But in our country where thankfully everything that is sold in retail, is governed by a clearly marked MRP which is strictly implemented too, I found the varying prices of books, from shop to shop, in the same neighbourhood, not only a little perplexing but sinister too.

To me it seems like a very well-planned ploy by the book shops who are resorting to sourcing books marked with the MRPs that suit their whims and fancies. By resorting to this practice, they are very effectively ensuring that they are not committing an offence, as long as they sell their wares at the printed MRPs. That the marked MRPs on them have been fudged, cannot therefore be challenged legally. But where there is a will, there is a way and so they do it very conveniently and it is the buyer who has to beware.

So, when you are shopping for the titles, you’ll now have to shop for the prices too and there’s just no other way!

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