Favourite Bookshops

Recently I had the pleasure of spending several hours at Strand Bookstore in New York which claims to have eighteen miles of books. In this era of gadgets and pads, its four book-filled floors reminded me how special paper books are. I browsed through a wide variety of subjects, and truly felt like I was at the crossroads of a thousand paths (as Tagore had once said about libraries.)  It was difficult to walk out even after two hours.

My Silicon Valley years were enriched by the large bookstores in Berkeley, particularly Moe's and Cody's, which held many floors of new and used books. While these stores covered all subjects under the sun, a bookstore called Computer Literacy knew the pulse of the Valley. All the nerds hung out there. Just as normal bookstores saw great excitement with the publication of, say, the new Harry Potter book, so Computer Literacy drew large crowds with the newly published Unix System V Manuals. Books that I bought there helped me cut my teeth as a software engineer.

My love affair with bookstores started when I was growing up in Sylhet. There were two bookstores in town: National Library and News Corner. They were very different. The former was staid and presented the books formally inside glass-door bookcases, while the latter had a more disorganized but colourful sprawl including foreign magazines. My mother who was pursuing her degree at Sylhet Women's College often took me to one or the other in the afternoon when she returned from class - an outing I looked forward to.

But not all of my favourite bookshops were big stores. One day in 1973 or 1974, a few years after we had moved to Dhaka from Sylhet, I was walking from Balaka Cinema towards Azimpur. I noticed that a few vendors had set up wooden tables next to the fence separating the footpath from the road and filled them with books. I stopped to take a look. These were used books – on a surprising variety of subjects - and the price was right. Over the next few years, I must have spent countless hours at these stalls and bought dozens of books from them.

Today, those tiny street stalls have morphed into the giant Nilkhet book mall with hundreds of bookshops selling over 80000 books a day.

Whenever I am in a new city I try to visit the bookstores. Some years ago in Vienna I discovered a great bookstore called Frick's.  My friend in London had me bypass Charing Cross Road in favour of the delightfully large Waterstone's in Piccadilly Circus. In Bangkok I have spent many pleasurable hours at Kinokuniya stores spread out over the city. Sadly many large bookstores are fading, including the Borders on Orchard Road in Singapore and various bookstore chains in the US.

But what about our city Dhaka? Over the last decade the bookstore business has undergone many changes. Bookworm near Jahangir Gate has remained steadfast during this turbulence. Boi Bichitra and Words N Pages also offer English books as do several stores at Aziz Super Market. And of course, every February the Boi Mela brings a treat for all book lovers.

So perhaps (to paraphrase Mark Twain) rumours of the death of paper books are greatly exaggerated.

www.facebook.com/tangents.ikabir