HERE IS A BRIEF excerpt from my book “CORACLES AND CROCODILES: 101 TALES OF INDIA”. It comes from a chapter on the booksellers in Bangalore (Bengaluru), and is about a remarkable bookshop that, sadly, no longer exists. Here is the extract from my book:

“Premier, one of the most fantastic bookshops that has ever existed, is also no more. It closed some years ago when its owner, Mr Shanbag, retired. I felt almost as if I had suffered a bereavement when I arrived where the shop used to be located on the short stretch of Museum Road between MG Road and Church Street, and found that it was no longer there. I still mourn its passing.

From the outside, Premier could have been mistaken for a newsagent. A rack of magazines stood by the shop’s entrance. When you stepped inside, you felt as if you had entered a book-lover’s Aladdin’s Cave.  Mr Shanbag, who was related to the founder of Strand Bookstall in Bombay, used to sit by the entrance, hidden behind the piles of books and bits of paper cluttering up his tiny desk. The rectangular shop’s walls were lined with books stacked one upon each other, from floor to ceiling. A central divider was covered in books. Two narrow corridors ran along the length of the shop allowing customers and staff to penetrate the dingy depths of the establishment. Deep inside the shop there was a narrow, book-lined passageway connecting the two main corridors. This was so narrow that most adults, and obese children, needed to progress sideways along this claustrophobic book lined chasm.

In most bookshops, customers can pick a book from a shelf, browse it, and then replace it if necessary. This was not the case at Premier.  Only the foolhardy or a newcomer to the shop would attempt to take a book from the tall, precariously stacked piles on Premier’s bookshelves. A 19th century French composer, Alkan, was killed when he was crushed by books collapsing on him in his library. A possible injury awaited any customer who attempted to withdraw a book from Premier’s hazardously stacked shelves. One could say that the books were stacked perilously. One careless move would initiate an avalanche of literature – both fiction and non-fiction. This often happened. Shanbag would raise an eyebrow, and then he or one of his assistants would restore ‘order’ in the shelves.

You may well wonder how customers ever managed to browse in Premier. It was simple. All that was necessary was to ask Shanbag or one of his helpers to retrieve the book for you. If you were unable to see the book that you desired amongst the huge number of volumes stacked in the shop, Shanbag would be able to tell you instantly whether he had it in stock, without resorting to a computer or any form of catalogue. He knew exactly what he had in his shop, and where a book was located if he stocked it. And when you had made your selection, he would prepare a bill, and then knock 20% off the final total if you paid in cash.

A remarkable thing about Shanbag was his great understanding of his regular customers’ reading habits. He could remember what each customer had bought previously …”

You can find out more about Premier as well as many aspects of life in India in my book/Kindle, which is available from Amazon stores such as: https://www.amazon.co.uk/CORACLES-CROCODILES-101-TALES-INDIA/dp/B0DJZ6DMYB/