The case for Bahrisons
An ideal bookstore accommodates all sorts of readers — the curious, the accidental, and the seasoned. Bahrisons is that ideal. Here, every visitor is treated like a potential reader. Founded in 1953 as a small bookstore in Delhi’s Khan Market, Bahri has been remembered for its tradition of always establishing an intimate connection between its owner and customers. This is true till date.
This means that you can peruse at leisure, regardless of whether you walk out the door with a purchase. In most cases though, keeping in view their extensive collection of coffee table glossies, poetry and modern classics, various award-winners and nominees, and its stacks of magazines, you’ll easily find something to add to your reading platter. In the off-chance that what you’re looking for isn’t available, the manager will willingly note down your wish list — another age-old custom.
You can’t forget that each time you step into Bahrisons, you’re stepping into a well-documented, living and breathing bit of India’s history. A story of post-partition struggles, entrepreneurship in the face of adversity, all coming together to get the newly-displaced people of a newly-formed country to read.
With this weight on its side, rest assured you won’t be disturbed by customers making their way to a café upstairs, like its well-known neighbour, nor will you have second-floor chattering seeping into your space as your sniff out new books. The well-lit sanctuary of Bahrisons is for you to meander through, in peace. It isn’t any wonder then, that despite 'other' bookstores having cropped up in its vicinity lately, the store boasts of seasoned loyalists who have been visiting its 400-square-foot, well-stocked space through seasons.
If your excited and noisy children are in tow, you can also take them away from this cultivated quiet, to Bahrisons Kids, just a few giraffe strides away. Happy reading to all generations alike!
Chayanika Priyam is a PhD candidate in Sociology, who spends her free time at the poetry nook of bookstore s
The case for Full Circle Bookstore
Here’s the thing: when you’re at a bookstore, you don’t really want to be distracted by its who’s-who clientele. Any Delhiite will know this is hard to avoid in the front-lane bookstores at Khan Market. But at its neatly tucked-in Full Circle, books are the real VIP.
The folks here know exactly what direction to point you in when you say you’re looking to browse “literary fiction,” sometimes telling you what’s interesting there.This delightful section aside, there’s a whole shelf for poetry from everywhere. Not many bookstores do this any more. Kids have a full section to themselves, also specifically demarcated from their older siblings.
Cozy and calm: The door leading up to Full Circle Bookstore
To anyone who willingly walks into the bookstore, the silence of Full Circle’s entry stairway, and once inside, the faint scent of incense mixed with the smell of books is nothing but calming. For others, this calm will ease them into browsing anyway.
The bookstores in Khan Market are a great place to spend your time if you are early to your lunch or dinner plans here. Browse, buy, and butterfly. But if you want an in-between place for some down-time after the browse-and-buy, in Full Circle, you can head right upstairs and read what you just got over a filter coffee and carrot cake. Unless it’s the weekend, Cafe Turtle is never overwhelmingly busy or loud. The music is mostly always a soft instrumental that understands the general disposition of someone who wants a private corner with the book they’ve just bought.
There’s no doubt that the front-lane bookstores here are important repositories of our social history. But once you’re done being starry-eyed there, make your way to the middle, find the bottle-green door, and head up those stairs. You’re welcome.
Vangmayi Parakala tries really hard to read all books she hoards
