Bookless In Churchgate

Narayan Amin was one of the first to set shop on Veer Nariman Road just off Churchgate station forty years ago with a delectable assortment of books spread out before him. The idea was to get books from old paper marts and wholesalers so that they could be made available at cheap rates in a central location. Soon, both sides of V.N. Road were lined with tall walls of old books running all the way down to Flora Fountain, and trading of books on the streets of Churchgate had become a culture in itself. Students of medicine were coming from places outside Bombay to find books gone out of print, the occasional reader was picking up thrillers, while literature students were bagging classics by the dozen. Even the oldest book published in India in the Heras library at St. Xavier’s College was found here.

There was just one little problem: that most of these booksellers held no licenses – because doesn’t it logically follow that there ought to be booksellers near educational institutions if there always are flower-sellers outside temples? In 2004, Section 340 of the BMC Act declared V.N. Road as a no-hawking zone, the books were driven away in vans, and the booksellers stood evicted. These were the same booksellers whom the ‘Demolition Man’, Khairnar, had once wished to leave untouched because of the noble work they were doing. Bharat Amin, the graduate son of Narayan Amin, formed the ‘Mumbai Booksellers’ Welfare Association’, and, with help largely from the media and college students tried to further the cause of the booksellers. However till date the proposal to allow the booksellers to shift to the University road is waiting in the wings. There are only 27 of them now, pushed to a small part of the pavement to the north of Flora Fountain.

Despite having taken a beating, the diminished legacy continues somehow, perhaps with the help of the guards of the American Bank who take care of the books at night. One still finds the students of medicine and literature and the occasional reader trotting along these stalls. There are chairs especially kept for senior citizens. Yet the difference between then and now is easy to tell: The great walls that greeted you as soon as you stepped out of Churchgate station are all gone. What indeed is difficult to tell is whose loss it’s been – the sellers’ or the society’s.

(First published on August 14, 2007 in The Raga, the official Malhar newspaper at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.)

-Siddhesh Inamdar
siddhesh.inamdar@gmail.com