Customers are buying books in kilo a day after news of shop’s closure broke on social media. (Amit Chakravarty) Customers are buying books in kilo a day after news of shop’s closure broke on social media. (Amit Chakravarty)

VIDYA Virkar first feared for the future of Strand book stall nearly 15 years ago, when the threat from fast expanding store chains such as Crossword and Landmark loomed large. Her father Padma Shri TN Shanbhag had reassured her saying, “None of these chain book stores can match Strand.”

The late bookseller, who had founded the iconic Mumbai bookstore in 1948, was proved right. The larger stores, confronted with a shrinking base of readers, were forced to entice new kinds of customers with stationery, games, gift items, coffee shops and many outlets were eventually shut down for lack of profits. Strand, on the other hand, refused to be distracted from its real business of selling books and managed to cling on, thanks to its loyalists.

But soon, a new, more persistent threat in the form of e-tailers such as Flipkart and Amazon appeared. This time, the tiny shop, a haven for bibliophiles from the city and beyond, couldn’t cope, and after seven decades of being in business, Strand Book Stall will be downing its shutters for good on February 28.

“Around the world, bookstores are shutting down because people prefer to buy books online. The business has been ailing for a while, and we tried what we could to keep it going, but the cultural landscape has changed. There’s not much we can do about that, and so we decided that it’s time to let go,” says Virkar, who has been running the business with her brother Arun since Shanbhag’s demise in 2009.

The day after the news of its closure broke on social media, the shop is filled with customers scanning the rapidly depleting shelves for treasures yet to be unearthed. Most of the stock is at least half-off, and many customers are buying books by the kilo. “An NGO heard about us shutting down and came yesterday afternoon. They bought most of the childrens’ books in our stock for distribution in schools and libraries,” says Virkar.

Strand Book Stall got its start when Shanbhag opened a kiosk at Colaba’s Strand Cinema in 1948. In 1953 the business moved to its present location in Fort, which is when it started becoming a city legend, counting among its customers luminaries like Jawaharlal Nehru, APJ Abdul Kalam and RK Laxman. Kiran Nagarkar recalls accompanying poet Arun Kolatkar on daily expeditions to the shop in the ‘60s. “We were in advertising and working round the clock, but whenever we had time we would go, sometime twice a day,” says the writer.

Nagarkar describes the time he spent at Strand, buying biographies of Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh and the works of Graham Greene and Gore Vidal, as formative. “You couldn’t have found ‘The Fish Can Sing’ by Icelandic writer and Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness anywhere else,” he says.

What drew many was Shanbhag’s passion for books, and his practice of giving discounts. “It wasn’t about making money for my father,” says Virkar, “He would get a good deal from publishers and he would always pass on the discount to the customers, because he said he was in the business of sharing knowledge.” Strand’s famous annual sale, which began in 1998 in Sunderbai Hall near Churchgate, only solidified its reputation for good deals on great books.

For the last five years, however, the business was ailing and Virkar, who had opened and then been forced to close six bookstores in Bangalore, recognised the inevitable. “All our calculations showed that we could no longer sustain it. We’ve been in the business for 70 years and have enough experience to know that,” she says. There is a lot of relief, she says, but there’s also sadness. “I hadn’t allowed myself to feel sad when I was closing my shops in Bangalore, but now that it’s time to close our flagship, I can’t help feeling sad. It’s the end of something great.”

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