Requiem for a book lover

Padmashri T N Shanbhag who passed away yesterday was the city's literary lung. Jerry Pinto remembers the man, synonymous with the Strand Book Stall

Requiem for a book lover

Padmashri T N Shanbhag who passed away yesterday was the city's literary lung. Jerry Pinto remembers the man, synonymous with the Strand Book Stall

The first time I met T N Shanbhag, the extraordinary proprietor of Strand Book Stall, I was the kind of buyer for whom no sensible bookseller would have much time.

I was a college student, I had very little money, I was in the habit of propping up odd corners of his shop and using his selection of books as a library.

But Shanbhag never let that matter to him. He was always happy to see me, regardless of the size of my bill.
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He was always happy to see everyone, whether it was Nani Palkhivala, whose collection of essays he published; or me and a buddy, wandering sweaty and footsore through the Fort.

He would look up and begin to carol joyously in that beautiful mellifluous Kannada accent, "Come, come, come.
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Have you seen this one? A beautiful edition and only at Rs 175"

Footnotes

T N Shanbhag (85) sold his first book at a 20 pc discount on November 20, 1949, from a kiosk at Strand Cinema.

Built Strand with Rs 450 after humiliation at a bookstore.

Strand, now 60, has had visitors like Pt Jawaharlal Nehru, Homi J Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai, APJ Abdul Kalam and Jaiprakash Narayan

He was conferred the Padmashri in 2003.

The Strand Book Stall he shaped was a happy accident. The shelves were never organised. You wandered around and here was Erma Bombeck and there was Derek Walcott and here was Salman Rushdie.

They all lay against each other, in an amicable mess of paper, and you let your fingers walk along their spines, a lover's caress.

Aiding you in your quest for the book you never knew you wanted, but discovered on his shelves was Shanbhag and his cheerful minions who would hit you in the back of the knees with a chair and ask you if you wanted tea.
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Orders were written in long-hand in a "downstairs book" and an "upstairs book".

But what he created also was a public-private space. Every time I went to Strand and I hope that this will continue into the future I met a friend.

Sometimes it would be a painter, sometimes a poet; sometimes an activist, sometimes a spy.

Always smiling

Old Parsi ladies would come in and ask for that book na, Booker Prize ni kaipan chhe? Young students in blazers would come in and say in their south Mumbai drawls, "Unkill, unkill, do you have, like, this book ya, The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright?" Middle-aged men in khadi kurtas would come in to enquire whether their poetry was selling and would try and rearrange Shanbhag's displays so that their books get a little prominence.
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And through all this Shanbhag smiled, his face radiant with the joy of a man doing a job he loved. It was the idea of a man who loved books that kept us going back.

Shanbhag's Strand Book Stall was the quintessential Mumbai bookshop: cosmopolitan, cut-price, confused and charming.

Go back in a couple of days. Buy a book. It will be a good way to remember one of those grand old men of letters.

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