The last Strand: a bookshop’s battle

Nostalgia reigns supreme as Strand Book Stall prepares to close for good, but it takes more than passion to run a books business

February 24, 2018 12:41 am | Updated February 27, 2018 05:46 pm IST - Mumbai

 Vidya Virkar of Strand Book stall in the book store which will be shut down on 28th February 2018.

Vidya Virkar of Strand Book stall in the book store which will be shut down on 28th February 2018.

Ever since word broke on Twitter on February 21 that Strand Book Stall is closing down at the end of February, the much-loved 70-year-old store has been inundated with bargain hunters. If only they had come sooner. After years of battling rumours of the store’s closure ever since the store’s founder, the twinkle-eyed T.N.Shanbhag, died in February 2009, the reality of buying and selling books in the era of Amazon has well and truly kicked in.

Mr. Shanbhag’s daughter and successor, Vidya Virkar, is rueful about word spreading so rapidly on the store’s closure. “I always wanted a very quiet closure when it was decided three months ago. If it was not for this lady who came looking for a design book, word of our closing would not have gotten out.”

Amongst the throng in the store when we visit is a well-wisher, who informs Ms. Virkar that Ajmer’s Mayo College is looking to buy books on equestrian sports in bulk for both their library and as awards to students who are polo players. “The librarian is coming from Ajmer by train,” he says before heading off, while she reminds him that Strand will indeed down shutters on February 28. Ms. Virkar, who has been running Strand after her father’s death, says, “I’m still figuring out what's next. I’m in no hurry to come up with something else right now. This has been a very trying time. Winding up is the most difficult part of a business.”

Long gone era

Located in Dhannur Building in the Borabazar precinct, the original Strand Book Stall is the last one standing. “We have had to shut six Strand stores in Bangalore (three), Mysore, Hyderabad and Pune over the last five years. The availability of books online has killed us,” Ms. Virkar says. Strand had managed to expand by opening stores on several Infosys campuses at the invitation of Sudha and Narayan Murthy. “The stores on the Infosys campuses did exceedingly well till Flipkart came by. The techies would come see a book, then look at Flipkart and place an order right in front of our salesman. We had to start closing down.”

Strand began in 1948 as a two-shelf book store in the lounge of the then-glamorous Strand Cinema in Colaba, when Mr. Shanbhag decided to open his own store after an officious salesperson made him feel unwelcome at a bookshop he would frequent. “The idea was to have a store where customers wouldn’t be turned away for browsing, and books were affordable. The Strand Cinema manager had been so taken by Mr. Shanbhag that he had the shelves put up himself,” Ms. Virkar recalls. “My father ended up making a neat ₹450 on his first consignment.”

 Week to go: Strand Book Stall in Fort will shut down on February 28.

Week to go: Strand Book Stall in Fort will shut down on February 28.

 

The store retained its name when it moved to the present location in 1956. Strand, Ms. Virkar recalls, was a pilgrimage spot, with people visiting from all over India. “Professors, book lovers, ministers. It was a one-stop shop. I firmly believe that my dad was a son of India, meant to start a bookshop post independence for the intelligentsia of a newly independent India, and he did it with a flourish.”

Back then, she adds, the country wasn’t well-served with books. “No big bookshops. Mass market books started coming in only much later. The little shops were always there, but were essentially stationery shops selling a few books on yoga, Vedic maths, Hindu mythology — local subjects; not the kind of international flavour that my dad gave to books.”

New reading spaces

While Ms. Virkar laments the lack of patronage, some Strand regulars have graduated to other brick-and-mortar stores, most notably Kitab Khana, started by Mr Shanbagh’s protégé, T. Jagath. Says Ranjit Hoskote, poet and cultural theorist, “I am deeply grieved to learn that Strand Book Stall will close its doors this week. This was, of course, a foregone conclusion, a sad end that we saw coming some years ago. Mr. Shanbhag’s Strand was an integral part of our growing up, our intellectual formation. However, Mr. Shanbhag's warm, generous, lively presence and his legacy will continue to be with us, through the wonderful ethos of book-selling, reading and discussion that his inheritors at Kitab Khana have created and sustained.”

Mr. Jagath, the CEO at Kitab Khana, is generous in his praise for his former employer, “Mr. Shanbag was an institution. He’d always encouraged people to read, even the staff. He’d encourage them to read at least one book a month, that’s how they’re all loyal to him. We are losing an institution. Working with Strand was always a pleasure, and we have all learned a lot which we’re still applying in the present.”

Ms. Virkar is grateful that her father won’t be seeing Strand down its shutters permanently. “It's nice to have a physical store, but if it is impossible for it to survive, then it’s better to let go. We have books that no one else keeps any more. People should come and pick up a book as a memento. It’s the nicest way to bid farewell to the bookshop.”

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