Premier Book Shop to close down

The final chapter?
The Hindu

The news of Premier Bookshop's possible closure by the end of April has left Bangaloreans heartbroken

Bookstores bear a distinct resemblance to five-star hotels these days. The sprawling places have central AC, soft music, smooth, tiled surfaces, sofas that suck you in and smart attendants who jab a few keys on a computer each time you ask for help and begin and end their sentences with a polite "Ma'am". These places have on display cards, stationary, stuffed toys, chocolates, perfumes, calendars and, of course, books too in neatly labelled, pretty shelves.

Another world

T.S. Shanbhag's Premier Bookshop off Church Street is a starkly different world. It's a 600 square-foot space with as many books as is humanly possible crammed into it. All along the walls are shelves groaning under heaps and layers of books, almost touching the ceiling. At the centre of the single-room shop is another mountain. The revolving Picador bookshelf opposite the entrance leans like the Tower of Pisa. You need to be a Premier veteran to figure out the method in this apparent madness and even the most seasoned veteran can't pull out a book without bringing the whole pile collapsing on him or her.

There's no computer in sight and the credit card machine, a recent entrant, isn't the presiding deity of the cash counter, but tucked away in a corner. In fact, you can barely see the table which makes up the cash counter, disappeared as it has under another pile of books. Shanbhag himself has to crane his neck above this pile to be seen.

If you think Premier just isn't the kind of place image-conscious and upwardly mobile Bangalore would own up to, you've got the city and its people all wrong. Bangaloreans are heartbroken by the news of Premier's possible closure by the end of April, following the expiry of its lease. Shanbhag has endless callers asking if they can do anything, just anything at all, to stall the closure. "Some have been asking if they can hold a demonstration or something!" says an amused Shanbhag, with his characteristic short laugh.

What makes this unfashionable 35-year-old place so dear to Bangaloreans? Perhaps the fact that this little place is more likely to have that obscure title you are looking for than those sprawling stores. Perhaps Shanbhag's astounding ability to tell you where exactly the book is and who the publisher is without looking into a computer. Perhaps his promise to procure the book if he doesn't have it and his willingness to then let you buy it on credit. Perhaps the joy of stumbling upon (literally) in this disorder a great book you weren't looking for. Perhaps, the nostalgia of the '70s generation that discovered the vast wealth of books with Premier. And above all, perhaps the frisson of being dwarfed by books that a place like Premier alone can give you.

For someone surrounded by words and more words, Shanbhag is a man of few soundbites and seems to have an inbuilt filter against sentimentality and nostalgia. All he will say is that things have changed enormously from those days when someone surveyed Premier and concluded it was too big for a bookstore. "The shop has grown smaller and smaller since then!" he laughs. It houses some 10 to 15 times more books that it did in the '70s. "Despite all that you might say about people turning to television and Internet, book sales have been going up. Everything from Amartya Sen's The Argumentative Indian to The Google Story sells. The city has grown more cosmopolitan and, of course, people have more money to spend."

Making no dent

All the new, posh bookstores haven't made a dent on Premier's popularity and Shanbhag has never been tempted to put stationery and chocolates alongside his books to increase sales. "I don't deny that we need a good stationery shop too. But these new places aren't bookstores. They also store books. That's all." Even if he were to shift base and keep Premier going in a new location, he promises it will remain a true blue bookstore.

Not that Shanbhag wants to claim any high culture status through his association with books. Ask him what makes the business of books so close to his heart and he simply says: "You make a little money, meet lots of people and pass time."

Among all other things it's perhaps also this rare lack of pretence that makes Bangaloreans want to hang on to this old world store and its owner.

One of Premier's steadfast patrons writes in his blog about all the bookshops in the city and the special place Premier continues to occupy in his heart: "I cannot see myself trying to build in such a relationship with the new shops. I guess this is the difference between banking with (a public sector) bank and (a private multinational) bank. I hope Shanbhag finds an outlet near the pub capital... We need an insane place to keep our sanity."