The idea of being surrounded by books in a quaint little space, reading all day, meeting fellow booklovers, and getting paid for it — it must the best job in the world for a bookworm. And Mahika Chaturvedi, 20, a Delhi University student, has that job.
She is a sales assistant in Delhi’s legendary The Bookshop, and I meet her one Tuesday afternoon to find out how her fantasy plays out in real life.
Mahika is clearly loving it. She hard-sells books, describing them in hyperboles and, if you’re still not convinced, even offering to buy it for you. She knows what to recommend if the book you’re looking for is unavailable, and the right author to introduce you to if you’re looking for someone new to read.
I find her sitting behind the counter diligently cataloguing books. When she sees me, the first thing she asks is if I have finished reading Amulet by Roberto Bolano, the book she had recommended on my previous visit. I tell her I have and that I thoroughly enjoyed it. We spend the next half hour talking about Bolano and other obscure authors before I ask her how she landed this job.
She tells me that on a visit to the store last summer, she had asked the person who held the position then if she could “maybe just dust books for them”. It turned out she could do more. The position was going to fall empty in a month, and she was asked to send in her resume.
She did along with an email saying she thought “it a wonderful opportunity to give my bit back to literature for all that it has done for me.” They must have sensed her enthusiasm, because her interview was short — just a chat about her pay check. She didn’t care what it was as long as it took care of her commute. “I just really wanted to work here,” she says.
Literary possibilities
For Mahika, the place has always been a kind of sanctuary that single-handedly opens up a gateway of literary possibilities. “This place pushes you into learning, and that’s exactly why all of us keep coming back.”
Before starting, she had romantic notions about the shop. “I thought I’ll just help out with books, fall in love...but no, there’s actual work involved.” Now, she feels the responsibility that comes with working at a place as iconic as this. “I have seen the zeal in the eyes of my co-workers. How all of us squeal in joy when we find something truly priceless. It isn't work at all, as tiring as it can be,” she says, clearly bitten.
Apart from cataloguing and stocking, Mahika helps customers find what they are looking for, and recommends books that she hopes they’ll come to love. It’s the latter that tests her knowledge of books, listening skills and enthusiasm.
In an indie bookstore, the relationship with customers is the heart of the business. “You cannot be scared of initiating conversations,” Mahika says, talking of how this means chatting intelligently about books, remembering customers, remembering their reading habits.
For example, Mahika never misses a chance to share interesting trivia about a book someone likes. Neither does she hesitate to push books she loves herself. “I’ve turned three people into dedicated Bolano fans,” she claims proudly (and that’s not including me).
I ask Mahika if she ends up actually buying books from the store, and find that she has an ongoing credit account, to be deducted from her next salary.
There are other perks too. One of the biggest of which, as she says delightedly, is meeting her icons. “Do you know I’ve met Shyam Benegal! And Arundhati Roy! Vikram Seth even signed my diary.”
On her first day at work, her boss asked her to refrain from “fan behaviour”, but the day she saw Arundhati Roy, Mahika dropped everything on the ground and started crying. Later, she composed herself and managed to tell Roy, “There are people who really appreciate what you’re doing.”
Mahika seems to be in this for the long haul; she even has her own vision for The Bookshop. She wants to organise more activities, collaborate with schools to arrange field trips to the store, and is determined to find ways for this generation to read more books.
Hearing her fervour and optimism, I feel that maybe this is what every bookstore needs, if it hopes to survive (and grow) in what is now an increasingly unpredictable market.
A freelance journalist, the author writes on literature, culture and the arts.
