In October last year, one of Mumbai's oldest business districts made room for a new kid on the block. The Wayword & Wise' bookstore set up shop inside a quaint building on Ballard Estate, its shelves filled with over 8,000 books ­several of which even the most assiduous reader might not have known about. Co-founded by Virat Chandhok, of the erstwhile 'Lotus' bookshop in Bandra, it followed a simple philosophy: `The average bookstore has books that customers want to read. But an exceptional bookstore stocks books that customers don't yet know they want to read.'

Some distance away, in the fancy Lower Parel neighbourhood overrun by restaurants and designer stores, is another such welcome oddity. Over a sprawling 2,100 sq ft of wooden flooring is the year-old 'Trilogy Bookstore and Library', its shelves packed with everything from the gorgeous 'A History of the World in 100 Objects', and an assortment of Terry Pratchetts to BR Bhagwat's `Faster Fenay' in its Marathi section that a certain generation of readers will immediately recognize. And there are several ­from preteens to the elderly, walking around and settling down with an interesting find--an experience that belongs firmly in a brick-and-mortar bookstore. `Trilogy' and `Wayword & Wise' are among a bunch of new book spaces that have quietly come up in Mumbai over the past few years. There is Fort's Kitab Khana which has acquired a cult following, the `Leaping Windows' library in Versova dedicated to graphic novels, the sprawling `Title Waves', the `Granth' store in Juhu, and even the Nehru Centre's new library , stocking over 25,000 books on its premises.

Most of them have been passion projects ­some by families fortunate enough to own property and nurture a yen for reading, others by bibliophile businessmen deciding to provide the financial support for a fledgling enterprise. With the returns on the books business being just about enough to break even, if that, the newer lot of entrants are the product of a love for reading and a generous benefactor.

For investment banker Atul Sud, who co-founded `Wayword & Wise' with Chandhok, the decision was spurred by a desire to focus on a enterprise he'd genuinely enjoy , after he sold part of his company to a foreign bank. “I had some empty space in the building, and didn't want to restart the financial business here,“ he says. “Neither did I want to give it on rent. I figured, let's start something that I`m passionate about. And the answer was obvious: books.“ The legendary KD Singh, founder-owner of Sud's favourite store--`The Book Shop' in Delhi ­ taught him all he could about “curating“ a bookstore's collection, and also put him in touch with Chandhok through another acquaintance. "I was told, there is only one person in Bombay who genuinely knows books and that's Virat," recalls Sud.

The patronage element is critical to a bookstore business, says Kitab Khana's co-founder Amrita Somaiya. "There is no money in books. Not everybody who is passionate about them can have the financial means to sustain running a store," she says. "So to have someone who provides the monetary support and is also, hopefully , as enthusiastic about books as you are, is vital." Kitab Khana also runs a cafe, which supplements the returns from the bookstore, as does Leaping Windows.

"Without the cafe, it would be impossible to keep the library running," admits Leaping Windows' co-owner Bidisha Basu. "The three of us co-founders all have other jobs. No one can afford to run a library for a living." At Trilogy too, the owners Ahalya Naidu and Meethil Momaya, rent part of the space out for events.

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