The Four Things That Make A Bookshop Truly Great In India (Picture Credit – Reddit/Instagram)
\n\nShortly after dawn on Kolkata's College Street, a fourth-generation bookseller named Arabinda Das Gupta swings a brass censer through the aisles of a shop his family has kept for over a century, letting the incense settle over shelves that hold the written word like a household deity. Around him wakes the largest second-hand book market on earth, a mile of stalls in brick, bamboo and canvas. No skylight or spiral staircase explains why the bookish travel across the country to stand here. To grasp the greatness of the Indian bookshop, look past imported checklists to four very Indian things it does.
\n\nThe Indian bookshop is often an act of survival before it is a business. Bahrisons, the landmark of Delhi's Khan Market, was founded in 1953 by Balraj Bahri Malhotra, a young refugee of Partition who raised his first capital by selling his mother's gold bangles. A short walk away, Faqir Chand and Sons has stood since 1951, opened by another family that crossed a bleeding border with almost nothing. Both turned displacement into shelves, and both are still run by the generations that followed.
Original source: https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle
