On Bookstores

I have this ability to get completely lost in a bookstore. By lost, I don’t mean the way I get lost in the Kumbh Mela or the bylanes of Basavanagudi. Lost here means I lose track of time, of others around me, and all I can see is more and more titles beckoning tantalizingly to be read, one by one.

This ability is by no means unique, I suppose. Plenty of people get lost this way in a bookstore.

And it’s not restricted to bookstores, in my case. I get lost in libraries as well. And a few other things and people, but all of that is out of the scope of this post.

So bookstores. I love them. So much that when we go shopping together, my mother assigns my sister to watch over me to ensure I don’t enter one and turn untraceable for hours on end (“No Priya, not the bookstore. We have to be at their house in two hours!’).

Guess she’s the one who started me off on that. For several birthdays, I remember being gifted books. Yeah, my parents did get me new clothes too, but those were the ritual things. The main attraction, the centerpiece, the Gift would be a book. With a note inside. At first, I just watched as they picked my gift off the shelves of the bookstore, and made the right noises (‘Gurgle!’ was about the only thing I said all day anyway back then) when shown books with colourful covers and even more colourful pages.

I think I’ve been visiting Nagasri Bookstore in Jayanagar since before I learnt my first letter. It soon became a well-established ritual to head there right after the term exams. It was my parents’ way of bringing in the holiday mood, I can say. But the first time I was thoroughly transfixed in a bookstore was at Manipal Center. I think I was nine. The books were hardcover, unlike the ones I was used to at Nagasri and Prism. There was a mildly ostentatious feel to the place. The Nancy Drew titles were different from the ones I’d seen before. And they were ridiculously overpriced. Then there were these history books with full colour photographs. And these remarkably child-friendly-looking encyclopaedias. They had to drag me away. I sulked.

Since then, it feels like a spirit enters me each time I step into a room full of books. I just have to read through every page I see. I’ve been told enough times about being in a bookstore and not a library (most notably by the proprietor of Prism in Jayanagar. That jerkofellow tried saying the same thing to me when I was reading away at Nagasri’s, but that proprietor, genial man that he is, said ‘It’s ok, ma’. Since then, I have never bought anything at Prism, and I make it a point to buy something at Nagasri if I spend more than a few minutes there).

Blossoms on Church Street is a different ballgame. They give you coffee while you browse! But somehow, the backroom look discourages me from browsing for too long. And the crowd as well. But that place, I must admit, is a treasure trove. They have everything, right from a travelogue by Michael Palin to random American romance novels. But then, a place like that simply has to be good, given its clientele, given that it takes second-hand books, and given that it spans over three floors.

I was rather content with my choices in bookstores, when my friend introduced me to Crossword on Residency Road. I must admit, the place with its multiple floors and large floor space scared me. I should have been pleased at the sofas and bean bags for people to sit and browse through the titles, and the coffee counter too, but I strangely was not.

The place was bigger than forty Nagasris. And held probably as many books. They were all organized by topic. There was plenty of Young Adult Fiction. Plenty of Indian English writing. Stuff that should have floored me. I felt sick and refused the coffee my friend offered, and in quiet defiance didn’t relax on the bean bags. Instead, I prowled the aisles, looking to get transfixed. The way that went, it was the first time I was asking if we could leave the bookstore and go have some chocolate cake.

I have never quite understood my revulsion for those sort of bookstores. Somehow I can never seem to find anything I like in those places, even though they are positively spilling over with books of all sorts. And when I do pick up a book and buy it, there’s always the nagging feeling that I’ve been had.

Someone suggested it’s possibly the user experience. And personalization. I’ve been seeing the frail, sharp-grinning proprietor with the faint coastal Karnataka accent from way too early and it’s etched in my mind that a good bookstore has atleast a hundred books per square foot, and it irks me when the proprietor or his assistant don’t magically reach for the book I ask and materialize it out of thin air.

But no, I adore the UCI Library where none of those things happen.

Maybe it’s the exclusivity? Probably. Along with the user experience, which makes me feel like I’ll simply love every book that belongs in that space. Maybe it’s the discounts he gives me. Maybe it’s the small talk.

But even if all those are true, I should feel some semblance of lostness when I enter Crossword near Miniforest, or Landmark. I have slowly stopped feeling those things. I wonder why.

Maybe it’s that you don’t have to be a lover of books to love these new-fangled bookstores. The coffee and bean bags seem too populist. As is the selling of non-book merchandise like junk jewelry and fancy-shmancy notebooks (I must admit here between my sister and me, we own a good many of those).

But it’s not just that… the same is true of Barnes and Noble here, but I actually love the place, and spent many wonderful hours chewing on a pizza roll while reading out fantasy fiction to my nephew, or chugging cherry coke and quietly reading Jane Austen.

Maybe because the choice of titles is too wide. Maybe they try to please everyone. Maybe it’s that the assistants aren’t the sorts who read, so they are unable to give you recommendations or locate the book you ask for without looking it up in a database.

Maybe it’s also because I don’t recognize the authors and titles anymore, being rather cut off from pop culture, and having distanced myself from mainstream media. Whose book reviewing skills are also on the decline. Combined with really bad writing, pretentious authors and all-too-attractive book covers and blurbs. Give me the orange-and-white Penguin ones anyday! And well, my own prejudices stand in the way too… gone are the days when I can read some pretentious NRI-writing-about-India tripe and like it, or be accepting of an Indiabashing point of view.

Maybe it’s a combination of all these things which contribute to my feeling like I just don’t belong there. Due to which I walk out, and back to my safe confines, where I can ask ‘Do you have Shame?’ to which people won’t do a doubletake, but smilingly retrieve Salman Rushdie’s book.

I wouldn’t agonize over this for so long if it weren’t for the fact that having loved books and bookstores for so long now, I have a sort of pipe dream to have my own bookstore. Appa has, on occasion half-jokingly discussed having a bookstore post-retirement with the proprietor of Nagasri. Such a nice, peaceful existence, he says. To which the proprietor gives his ‘Not on your life! Don’t you desire a tension-free retirement?!’ look. It’s apparently a lot tougher than it seems.

It’s not like I’ve not tried finding out… each and every time I ask him how he manages to stock exactly the sort of things I like, he just thinks I’m complimenting him (which I seem to do every single time I visit, anyway) and laughs and shrugs it off as usual.

So, well, let’s get to the bottom of this mystery. Which is your favourite bookstore? Why do you like the place? Tell me, in the comments section. I need to know, so that forty years later, the bookstore I own, or the online bookstore I design, has the best possible user experience. And by best possible, I mean one that I’d like.

Postscript in Pink

Or An Afterthought in Amber.

Or Revelations in Red.

I’ve been seeing so many such titles at the Jack Langson Library [At the university, all places have names associated with them - John Croul Hall, Aldrich Park, Donald Bren Hall, Paul Merage School of Business... and most of these people are wealthy donors ] – all American ones. So much that I want to write one like that. It shall have tales of intrigue, death, violent romance and some very lurid images on the cover. Which shall all be in the title colour – pink or amber… but for red, it’ll have to be bloodied letters on a black background.

I’ve begun reading one such book now. It’s Indian English writing, though. It’s called The Pangolin’s Tale. It’s about misfits in society or some such. It promises to be an exercise in practiced, controlled, subdued cynicism and intense self-revelation. Wish me luck in getting through it without shouting ‘WHAT’ every few pages.

The writing seems bad… too much overload of information in the first few pages. It seems even worse than “Renowned author Dan Brown staggered through his formulaic opening sentence”, as Prof Pullum put it.

Last week, I read A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Md. Hanif. It’s a rather endearing read, I strongly recommend it. The language, the narration are all so good that you even begin to identify and/or sympathize with the rather sadistic under-officer Ali Shigri, but the plotline… oh man, give me a break! The author tries to do a Rushdie… y’know, the whole “I was witness to the whole history unfolding… I even took part in it. Though of course, by a quirk of fate, or planning, or both, history doesn’t record me in the story”. It was great in Midnight’s Children, it was okayish in The Moor’s Last Sigh. Ground Beneath Her Feet was seriously unreadable. I think that sort of plotline has been done to death, and if I read another book like that, I’ll write a blogpost from the future about how the author died in an aircrash/fire/car accident/suicide attempt and I was somehow responsible for it in my own small way.

I’m wondering what book to borrow next. The library is rich in All-American reads. Not so much chicklit. Any suggestions?

Oh, and the postscript in pink…. here it comes. All reflective, long-winded and meaningless.

When all the songs in your playlist start making sense to you in some weird, long-winded way, it’s time to begin worrying. People are fickle. Natural, considering that our minds are all work in progress. No one really says what they really mean. And you can’t fault them for it – they themselves don’t quite know what they mean. And you wonder whether it is okay to be curt right at the outset, and cause some unpleasantness which will resolve itself with time, or hope that things change as often as people’s minds, and try putting up with it, or sending subtle signals, or, trying to communicate your feelings through ESP and hoping that the person will be receptive enough atleast through that channel… in other words, not really trying to resolve matters, and getting so used to being in unpleasantness that anything else seems out of your comfort zone.

And the Afterthought in Amber:

Everything happens for a reason. When you go through adversity, you curse your circumstances, your environment, and most of all, yourself. What you realize when it’s all over is, it gives you strength to soldier on in pursuit of greener pastures. It makes your happy times even more happier, now that you know how lucky you are in having good times. There’s a constant amount of discontent anyone has at any given time, and it’s better wasted on real difficulties than on something you make up just to feed that part of you which feels discontent.

The Revelation in Red:

You can get used to anything. Even killing.

Wow, three random titles and I come up with stuff on the fly. Heck, I should write a novel sometime, Indian Diaspora Writer ishtyle. It seems so darned easy.

Blush.

There are times when I splurge, and there are times when I’m rather…. economical. I’m not ashamed of exhibiting the latter behaviour, and successfully ignore stares from rude waiters when I do not tip, or bookstore owners when they say “Thisees naat ye library”.

But occasionally, I do end up blushing. Like today.

Usual bookstore whose owner doesn’t quite mind me finishing the pulp-fic pop-lit in the store. Not when I actually do buy more durable tomes from him with amazing regularity.

I came across one of those tiny books which give you daily predictions for a whole year, based on your Sun sign. Found the right one. Found it was cellotaped shut.

Now I had no intention of buying that book, given one-third of the year is done. But I wanted to test the accuracy of the damn thing. Just like I read the day’s forecast after I am done for the day.

So since the cellotape was only around the middle of the book, I tried peering through the ends of the book, for one specific date to check if the book was on track there. Feb 10, Feb 14, Feb 15…. and I see the proprietor giving me a look.

I tried giving my best ‘Well, you caught me with my hand in the cookie jar for the gazillionth time since I was four years old, now what?’ look, but he just smiled and said

That’s not for Taurus, that’s for Aries

Whoops.

This is what happens when you’ve been going to the same bookstore since before you learned to read.

PS: I find in most stores that such books are present for all the sun signs with the exeption of Taurus… why? Is there more demand for these books among Taureans?

Book Tag

A book that made you laugh: Ogden Nash’s Candy is Dandy. And some passages of English, August.

A book that made you cry: Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead. For the sheer hopelessness of the writing and unreadability that ensued.

A book that scared you: 1984

A book that disgusted you: The Mammaries of the Welfare State by Upamanyu Chatterjee. Sequel to English, August, but lacks any subtlety. Very in-your-face, so much that you hate the practiced cynicism the book radiates.

A book you loved in elementary school: The Adventurous Four series of Enid Blyton – the one with Andy, Tom, Jill and Mary and their boat.

A book you loved in middle school or junior high school: Malory Towers and St. Clares by Enid Blyton.

A book you loved in high school: The English Teacher, Grandmother’s Tale and Harry Potter.

A book you loved in college: I read too much in college, and most of it was pulp-fiction or pop-literature that it refuses to stick. I’d say Catcher in the Rye.

A book that challenged your identity: How to Win Friends And Influence People. It’s the only self-help book I have any respect for. Oh, and English, August, too.

A series that you love: Lots – all of Enid Blyton’s schoolgirl series, all the Blandings books by Wodehouse. I like Blandings much, much better than Jeeves.

Your favorite horror book: World’s Greatest Ghosts. The book became a major rage in school, with everyone asking to borrow it, including snooty seniors who probably didn’t know of my existance till then. The popularity of it can be gauged by the fact that it came back to me in four pieces.

Your favorite science fiction book: The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. I liked the first three, but the other two became too much for me. Sure, there are brilliant ideas introduced, and alternative explanations offered for so many everyday occurrences, but when these become the essence of the book and not the story, for five long books, it gets trying. Asimov’s I, Robot is aeons better and comes close to being put on a pedestal by me, though his Foundation and Elijah Baley series weren’t all that great. I liked his Nightfall: Brilliant concept, but after a while it gets unreadable.

Your favorite fantasy: Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer. I like the no-nonsense attitude of it all. I like Foaly the centaur and his innoventions (word I coined – innovative inventions. Propagate it, do.). But above all, I liked it that the lead character was not a loser-who-gets-lucky, but an astute plotter and planner whose plans worked, and not just due to luck. I hate most other fantasy series.

Your favorite mystery: Feluda. I also like short stories featuring Miss Marple. Perry Mason rocks, but more for astute grandstands and manipulations than for any detective work.

Your favorite biography: The last book I bought. And also, Satyajit Ray – The Inner Eye – Biography of a Master Filmmaker.

Your favorite “coming of age” book: English, August. And to a lesser extent, Swami and Friends.

Your favorite classic: Gone With The Wind. And though I haven’t read it fully, Ponniyin Selvan.

Ebooks vs hardcopies: For availability and easy of obtaining, ebooks. Yes, I’m aware they are illegal. But Rupa and Penguin can bring down prices, can’t they? And bookstores can be better stocked? I can’t justify paying big bucks to read stuff I’d like to read only once. And… ease of stocking is certainly more with ebooks; I don’t have mum and dad yelling that my eBooks folder needs maintenance. But the thing with ebooks is, out of sight and out of mind. I see Back On The Road Again peeping out of my crowded bookshelf, and am reminded I should read it sometime. But The Hunchback of Notre Dame has been languishing on my laptop for four years now.

And who do I tag?
Anyone who wants to do this tag. Just anyone.

How to write an Indian Novel

Ah.. no, I don’t pretend to be about to write something that has even an iota of the brilliance of the RK Narayan essay of the same name, which got accepted by Punch for six guineas.

So I am appalled by the quality of fiction, more importantly Indian fiction that one gets to see in bookstores these days.

Actually, let’s go into a bit of a zoom-out…. I hate the newer bookstores of Bangalore. The ones that give you a basket to shop for books. (Blossoms, however, is excluded from the list…. but then it isn’t a ‘newer’ bookstore, is it) These places are stacked wall-to-wall with multiple copies of the same pulp-fic pop-lit trashy writing that I would maybe read but never in a million years buy.

Add to this mix nouveau riche folks who don’t have a discerning taste in reading, but buy books all the same from these bookstores, which don’t even have friendly proprietors to guide people around and give discerning recommendations on what to read… and what do you get?

Chetan Bhagat. Tushar Raheja. Arundathi Roy. And maybe Arvind Adiga, but I’ll refrain from passing judgements till I’ve read the book.

These are people who’ve probably read ONLY bad Indian writing, and said to themselves, “Heck, I can do better!”, and proceeded to write bestsellers which line the bookstores which young Indians read…. vicious circle there.

So when I read these book blurbs, I say to myself, “Heck, I can do better than that!”. Then realization dawns that I probably do not have the patience to write anything other than 1000-word blogposts about absolutely nothing. And fiction.. haha. I can’t spin yarns for nuts.

But hey, I can probably use some factory methods to write a novel? There are some time-tested rules on that. It all depends on what I want.

Two very obvious paths come to mind. The first one is the Chetan Bhagat way, which has been illustrated quite succinctly here. But then, I don’t want all that that comes with a Chetan Bhagat reputation, especially not fanmail like this, this and this. After reading these comments on Logik’s post on Mr. Bhagat, I began to sincerely, fervently hope those comments were from someone pulling a fast one on Logik, and not actual fan comments by fans who thought a scathing review of Mr. Bhagat was actually Mr. Bhagat’s blog!

So the other path would be to go the Arundathi Roy way.

I’ll first have to get a frickin’ crazy amount as an advance from Penguin or Rupa, or Bloomsbury if the Gods smile down on me. The publicity wave that follows that will be enough to keep me away from writing for months. In due course of the wave, there will be atleast one mediaperson who compares me with the other Tam-Brahm writergirl Kaavya Viswanathan. Of course, it’ll be hard to fit together her origins from Chennai, Glasgow, Timbuktu, and godaloneknowswhereelse with my Bangalore, Bangalore, Bangalore and Bangalore origins, but I’m sure ToI-Let paper will find some way to prove Kaavya’s Bangalore connection, or connect me to Glasgow and Harvard. After all, these people are the ones who researched Sabrina Setlur’s Bangalore origins!

And when I finally do get to writing the book, life is going to begin to be hell. Coz, most of these celebrated writers have had lives that are profoundly Left-leaning, at the crossroads of tradition, hated their origins, questioned everything around them…. unlike my right-of-center upbringing and conformist behaviour.

And my life has been a series of uninteresting events. I thank the stars above for my having all my loved ones intact, and for trauma being just another word in the dictionary, unlike many best-selling authors. But I’ve never witnessed history unfold, atleast I haven’t witnessed anything that has been proven yet to be an event that will be in history textooks. I went to a normal school that didn’t believe in building the character of its students by subjecting them to traumatic experiences, and pre-university was even more normal. NITK was a life-changing experience, but hardly anything happened there that is Booker-material… I didn’t lead a band of protestors to the Chief Warden’s door demanding for better food in the messes or anything. And I stayed put when riots broke out on the highway. I didn’t research ways to beat the Hayflick limit, I didn’t break into the Pakistani Arms database. Neither did I wrestle terrorists on the beach, nor did I meet the extremely poverty-stricken who made me hate myself for being born into the bourgeoise.

I might of course write a seemingly-humorous novel about very little, but sprinkled generously with Kannadiga and Tam-Brahm in-jokes, endless Bangalore reminisces, what it means to be a South Bangalorean… or put that all in a schoolgirl story, like my friend Poojitha Prasad did. But alas, I’ve been too hardened by life, and I’m pretty sure any such attempt on my part will reek of sermonizing on everything from following rules (or not) and feminism. Either ways, it won’t go further than my cousins in their early teens who are probably the only folks in their age group (my target audience) I know who’d choose to read a book in their spare time.

So, well, I’ll probably have to write a book that angers the Who’s Who of Bangalore. Bangalore, for the local flavor. And to ensure there’s a readymade audience of Bangaloreans and expat Bangaloreans who’d be roused by curiosity enough to read the book.

Ramachandra Guha, surely. And since all the Bongs think he’s one of them, I’m sure I’ll catch their eye too. There’s no point berating UR Ananthamurthy; everyone does, these days. It’ll be a heart-wrencher to bash Anil Kumble as he was a crush of mine once upon a time, but the deed will have to be done to raise some cricket-lover eyebrows. I might say a few things about Vishnuvardhan, but I’ll keep away from even mentioning Dr. Rajkumar lest the LeT and HuJI sleeper cells in Bangalore use that as an excuse to arrange some rioting.

Girish Karnad and Arjun Sajnani would probably get a dose, and maybe I should go on to assert that the plays at Ranga Shankara is the antithesis of all that that Shankar Nag stood for. Maybe I shouldn’t spare Mr. Garudachar of Garuda Mall fame… the amit_123 and isha_123 population of Bangalore might probably want to know more about their weekend hangout spots.

And to pay some tribute to my being in the software field, I’ll need to target Infy and Wipro and say they are really bleeding the city… now if that doesn’t raise hackles, I don’t know what else will. My community will possibly disown me, given the large number of folks who started their careers there…. brilliant, I’d be the enfant terrible of the Indian writing scene.

And I don’t think my publishers can ask for anything better.

The media would probably make me out to be some sort of a Killer Queen (yes, I still am a fan of Brian May, Roger Taylor, John Deacon and Farokh Bulsara)…. my publishers would have to pay royalty (and I make bad puns, yes).

Guess it would start off as a pathbreaking novel that “breaks” the “myth” of the whole world being Bangalored. A relatively insignificant work. And then comes to the notice of the Booker committee… who possiby haven’t gotten over their Raj hangover and expect any work from India to be Macaulayan in its view of the country to be certified as good, in their opinion.

And maybe I should wear a black hat along with my red tussar saree (a la Ms. Roy in In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones) when I go to accept the award and tell the committee they have blood on their hands. And maybe I should also say my saree is red – red with the blood of the millions of nameless toilers who pick out silkworm cocoons from scalding hot water to spin silk… possibly get out all my frustrations about Silk Board, and the traffic jams around it.

And back on home turf, I should probably spend the rest of my life protesting anything even remotely connected to Bangalore – the dancing ban, the 11:30 deadline, launch of new radio stations, construction of a new flyover, a new software park getting constructed, Def Leppard calling off its concert, Aerosmith coming, U2 coming (which I’ll probably use as an excuse to catch the concert live for free), Metallica coming, Maiden thinking of coming again, Russel Peters, S. Ve Shekhar conducting his plays, Y.Gee Mahendran doing the same, and PSBB opening another chain of schools in the city…

And what’ll I do for a living? Well… my first book will possibly be a cash cow.

But then, I’d probably face the prospect of piracy eating into my earnings.

So, well, I’ll upload the book on a googlepage, for free download. And maybe I’ll gather enough to publicize a Download Day for my book…. calling it a celebration of freedom from copyrights and the like… and ask folks to download the book, pass the link on…. and maybe also get Al Gore to back me on making the world a greener place by promoting ebooks… just think of all the trees that would have had to be cut to fulfill the demand for my book!

And I’ll live the rest of my life off Ad-Sense earnings.

And maybe the satisfaction of controlling and shaping atleast a part of public opinion via free stuff, a la New Life’s free proselytization material…. I can’t do that with hard copies; I don’t have moneybags from Latin America funding me.