<p>Almost all my working life, bookshops have held a special fascination for me. Whichever city I found myself in, whether in Bhubaneswar, where I bought my first book, George Bernard Shaw’s Complete Prefaces, or Ooty, where science fiction caught my fancy, or New Delhi, where I picked up a hardbound edition of Le Carre’s Smiley’s People at a hefty discount, I never could walk into a bookshop and not come back with a book. </p>.<p>In Kolkata, one frequented Oxford Book Store on Park Street (a library cum bookshop) or the really tiny street-side bookshops in front of Metro Cinema on Chowringhee (from where I picked up my copy of Subramanyam Chandrasekhar’s Truth and Beauty). I also bought the first book for my daughter, a large book full of pictures at the Calcutta Airport bookshop way back in 1988, when she was all of three years old.</p>.<p>Once I moved to Bengaluru, the bookshops I used to haunt were the late Murthy sir’s Select off Brigade Road and Shanbaug’s Premier Book Shop on Museum Road. Murthy once fished out a special edition of Scientific American, which was a compilation of seminal articles on cosmology, including one on the discovery of tectonic plates and the continental shift, which, the editors explained, was connected to cosmology, a connection that is becoming more and more relevant today, thanks to advances in astrobiology.</p>.<p>As for Shanbaug of Premier, he once gingerly extracted and proffered me, from one of the many teetering multi-storeyed stacks, a book titled Hindu Myth, Hindu History by Heinrich von Stietencron, an author whom I had not heard of until then. The book proved to be a scholarly work, and I lapped it up! I have since lent this book and recommended it to many of my friends. Strand in Manipal Centre was another bookshop that had some fantastic books on science and mathematics. I owe my copy of G H Hardy’s Mathematician’s Apology to this place. I even found a good book, Jayant Narlikar’s The Scientific Edge, in a bookshop in a five-star hotel—the Taj Residency in Bengaluru.</p>.<p>Most of these places have long since vanished, and most bookshops today are places that lack character. The odd, good book is tucked away in a remote shelf, and there is no one there to fish it out for you. </p>.<p>For me, a sign of things to come happened way back in 1995 in Allahabad, where I had gone on some work for the organisation I worked for those days. As is my wont, I wandered to the local bookshop in the evening, where I found Steven Weinberg’s classic The First Three Minutes. As I went to the cash counter clutching the book lovingly, I overheard the owner, an old man, telling his friend, “I fear there will be no one to look after this place once I am gone.”</p>
<p>Almost all my working life, bookshops have held a special fascination for me. Whichever city I found myself in, whether in Bhubaneswar, where I bought my first book, George Bernard Shaw’s Complete Prefaces, or Ooty, where science fiction caught my fancy, or New Delhi, where I picked up a hardbound edition of Le Carre’s Smiley’s People at a hefty discount, I never could walk into a bookshop and not come back with a book. </p>.<p>In Kolkata, one frequented Oxford Book Store on Park Street (a library cum bookshop) or the really tiny street-side bookshops in front of Metro Cinema on Chowringhee (from where I picked up my copy of Subramanyam Chandrasekhar’s Truth and Beauty). I also bought the first book for my daughter, a large book full of pictures at the Calcutta Airport bookshop way back in 1988, when she was all of three years old.</p>.<p>Once I moved to Bengaluru, the bookshops I used to haunt were the late Murthy sir’s Select off Brigade Road and Shanbaug’s Premier Book Shop on Museum Road. Murthy once fished out a special edition of Scientific American, which was a compilation of seminal articles on cosmology, including one on the discovery of tectonic plates and the continental shift, which, the editors explained, was connected to cosmology, a connection that is becoming more and more relevant today, thanks to advances in astrobiology.</p>.<p>As for Shanbaug of Premier, he once gingerly extracted and proffered me, from one of the many teetering multi-storeyed stacks, a book titled Hindu Myth, Hindu History by Heinrich von Stietencron, an author whom I had not heard of until then. The book proved to be a scholarly work, and I lapped it up! I have since lent this book and recommended it to many of my friends. Strand in Manipal Centre was another bookshop that had some fantastic books on science and mathematics. I owe my copy of G H Hardy’s Mathematician’s Apology to this place. I even found a good book, Jayant Narlikar’s The Scientific Edge, in a bookshop in a five-star hotel—the Taj Residency in Bengaluru.</p>.<p>Most of these places have long since vanished, and most bookshops today are places that lack character. The odd, good book is tucked away in a remote shelf, and there is no one there to fish it out for you. </p>.<p>For me, a sign of things to come happened way back in 1995 in Allahabad, where I had gone on some work for the organisation I worked for those days. As is my wont, I wandered to the local bookshop in the evening, where I found Steven Weinberg’s classic The First Three Minutes. As I went to the cash counter clutching the book lovingly, I overheard the owner, an old man, telling his friend, “I fear there will be no one to look after this place once I am gone.”</p>
