Back of Books

This essay talks about the world of books and the actors who populate this world before the book reaches the hands of its reader.

Mandi House metro station is located at a convenient place for the art lovers of New Delhi. Inside the metro station, hoardings can tell you about various art events at Indian Habitat Centre, National School of Drama, Lalit Kala Akademi, FICCI. Outside the metro station, with all the larger banners and billboards, you can get to know about various theatre and dance shows. Sahitya Akademi Library, Delhi Public Library, Oxford Bookstore, Goethe Institute, are at walking distance from this station. At regular hours, you can find people paying Rs. 5 for chai, sipping conversation in between and eating crack jack biscuits. There are also makeshift shops where you can buy chips, namkeen, sweet potato, chaat, handkerchiefs, socks, earphones, mobile covers, etc. The Jamun trees that line the Copernicus road provide enough shade during the worst summer days and also act as an umbrella when the unpredictable weather of Delhi chooses to confirm its arbitrariness by raining in November. The roads are however unsurprising because of the traffic jams during morning and evening hours as it connects the busy stretch of Connaught Place, India Gate, and ITO. The pavements are regularly chalked with coloured drawings – sometimes kids, sometimes women, men, a young boy, sometimes a middle-age man, can be seen drawing on these tiled pavements with deep interest.

It was one such evening. Three young men sat with an old battered black radio, formed a circle and were sketching with coloured chalks on the pavement that leads to Mandi House Metro Station. The sound of Kishore Kumar impressed a smile on almost all metro goers, and many were looking at the coloured covers of books spread on the tiled sidewalk, but no one really made a stop there. Another constant at this station's route is a bookseller, who sits near the exit of the metro station. He sells bestsellers. The bestsellers are set and spread in a way so that you see all the books. I was interested in this art of setting up books – a way to garner attention. It was like books were themselves getting up a little bit and calling out to you to have a look at them. 'Pick me, Choose me.' 

In the front row sits Chetan Bhagat's new book. In the last row lies The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. All the books are covered with cellophane packaging except for The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

The sound of Kishore Kumar gave me a push to ask him about books. I have always wondered about the relationship between books with sellers. A few months back, I was at ITO's traffic light when I saw a man on the footpath counting books in sets and not as a singular item. He did not put the books in a bag. With one hand he took a bunch of books and placed it in the bag. He packed the books in sets, carried those 20-30 book titles in a battered white plastic bag on his back and continued walking to wherever he was going.

The bookseller at the metro station is a 35-year-old looking man who sits behind a desk covered with white plastic. The desk is two feet higher than the ground. The plastic seems old and appears like it has been reused several times. On it, he sells mobile accessories. Adjacent to the desk, on the ground, is the collection. Spread again on old white plastic, that invited attention but not sales. He says he sits only in evenings. "From 4 to 9."

This is also the time when Mandi House is most active and bustling. It is the time when office-goers go back home, and students like me return to their homes.  I ask him, "Do all the books get sold?" He looks at me, pauses, studies me and then says, "No. But look at this..." He points at the vast expanse of his plastic sheet and the books kept on it. He stretches his arms. Surely, the white plastic sheet on the ground takes more space than the mobile desk which has covers for mobile phones too. "But how do you get to know which books are being sold, or what people are buying? All the books that you have are bestsellers?" "We know. We keep a list. We keep getting updated. Just look at this…" He prods me to look at the collection. He proudly shows them to me. "Look at this one, Room 105, Chetan Bhagat's new one."

He corrects the arrangement and puts the bestseller Chetan Bhagat in the first row for other heads on walking legs to see. I wonder how comical people might look from a place where he is sitting and selling books. I saw mostly legs urging other legs to hurry up. 

In between our conversation, his eyes are also alert to plausible customers. He keeps looking at other people, who for a moment slow down to see the books but no one really stops. He keeps books in a slant position, such that each book is being supported by the other book's back. All the book titles are also visible to passers-by. It is only the books in the last row that are lying flat and are hidden by the shade of the tiled platform above it.

Along with the books he also sells tempered glass for mobile phones, back covers, etc. He sits on the broad tiled pavemented railing that runs along the footpath. Behind him are plants that have sharp leaves. 

I ask him how many books are sold in a day. His answers are monosyllabic and evasive. I understand that I am intrusive without telling him my reason for doing so. He shakes his head and fidgets with the rubber band in his hand. I ask him where he gets the books from. "I get it myself." "But where do you get these books from?" He looks hesitant. He asks why I am asking all this, finally.

It is my time to get apprehensive as I am not really sure if he will answer me or dismiss me. I tell him that I am writing about books and their life before books are made. "Matlab, you are looking at Writing. Because before the books come, it is the Writing that happens. People write books. Then you read these." I laugh at myself. I correct myself. "No. I mean that I am looking at the time in the life of books before they reach someone – like how you get it, how you store it, where you store it…" He cuts me, for good in between and seemed a little excited, "Oh, I got it." He points to his collection of books and elaborates, "I get these from Daryaganj. Carrying them myself in this bag." He shows me threadbare canvas bags with big, bold letters of 'Eagle Brand Masala' written on one of the bags. The letters have eroded over a long period of use. The bags are not large enough, and I wonder how he tries to put all these books in one sack. Another set of bag has been kept under his seat. He gets up and tilts the seat blanket for me to see. "A lot of care needs to be taken. See", as he arranges the tempered glass's boxes on the desk and shows me how he succeeds in packing books and putting them together. 

He places one layer of books vertically. Above it, another layer of books horizontally. He uses his hands to forms a 'T' to explain. He describes how he takes care of the books. "This way, books do not fold, and their covers do not fold. I clean them myself. Need to be wiped after regular intervals as this is a busy road and dust settles on them quite frequently. The plastic covering prevents the books from getting dirty, covering these myself. We don't get these covered from the market. You can see for yourself that these are clean right now." I nodded in agreement.

"Where do you go to Daryaganj to buy?" I ask. "Aree, you won't find all of these at Daryaganj. These are special. Some of them..." "Yes, they are. Look, at that cover of Harry Potter book. Blue one. I have not seen this cover in any of the bookshops in Daryaganj." "Exactly! We get these from various places." "Like?" "Daryaganj only, but many places." "So, what do you do with these after you are done for the day?" "I take them back." "To Daryaganj?" He shakes his head with energy, "Akshardham!" "How do you carry them? Rickshaws?" "No. By BUS. Rickshaws will take 100 Rs, for just taking this much load" and laughs when he says this. "So, what do you do, for example if the books do not get sold?" "We exchange with people who want them. Some people ask us or call us that we need so and so book. We go and give it to them."

"But then what is your primary business?" I ask.  He opens arms wider this time and directed his eyes at the desk; grazing both his hands in the air, as if throwing some playing cards around, as if there is a visible treasure that I do not see. "This." Pointing at the white plastic-clad desk. "I sold only 10 books last week. With these (mobile accessories), I make around Rs. 1000-800  per day." His shoulders drooped as he gets bitter when he looks at the books. He is sad to admit it. It is then that I ask him whether he accepts people bargaining. He said yes but looked defeated. Like someone acknowledging that he didn't have much choice in matters like these. He says that he changes the price accordingly. But it doesn't look like this decision has seen any hope in the last few months.

While we were having this conversation, a young man in a hurry stops and asks the price of a book. The bookseller blurts out the name of the book with utmost ease and says "200". The young man leaves without saying anything or looking back at the book or the bookseller again.

I ask him about the competition from other booksellers at Mandi House or Rajiv Chowk as he usually works in Darya Ganj or Mandi House. "There is no point going to Rajiv Chowk. There are already a lot of people (booksellers) there. If I am only selling 3-4 books in this area, entry of one more person in the market will defeat both our sales. So, no one enters. Why would they?"

The seller saw books as goods. As a consumer of books, I see books both as goods and as a service. Goods are the items you buy; service is an action that a person does for someone else, for example, teaching. In interacting with booksellers,  libraries, the act of dealing with books both as a good and service. A bookseller in the process of giving me a book is also initiating my reading experience, which is an invaluable service for me. 

If you go to bookshops in Daryaganj, you will recognize how busy the sellers are. That at every point of time people employed in bookshops are involved in more than one activity. That these sites are not just about books. That these sites are not only about the pleasure of books or surrounding the beauty of books, or about how time seems to stop in libraries. That these sites are about labour. These spectacles we see are infected with exertion. That these sites are about enormous mental and physical effort involved in making books reach a reader. Maybe we realise it at the billing counter, or when the package gets delivered, or perhaps much before all of that when we have to make sure our books don't turn yellow.

It is at the billing counter where you see what is being sold and what is being bought. The books that are being sold are not the only things that are being purchased here. There are pencils, pens, fevicol, stapler pins carefully placed near the exit of the shop or near the bill counter. There are pencil boxes, watercolours, coloured A4 size papers, being bought. The famous Book Bazaar in Daryaganj, is a large bookshop which sells books according to weight- '100 Rs for a kilo, 200 Rs for a kilo'- these cards can be seen hanging outside as well as inside the shop. Books are not just stocked on shelves here, some cartons are stuffed with books. In such boxes, rarely are people correcting the arrangement of books, they are just searching for the right book. What is more important to sellers is that Rs. 100 book does not mix with Rs. 200 book. There is a separate carton for picture books, for CDs, for pencil box, pencil colours, crayons.

At Daryaganj: The early hours as their space is being set up for books and readers. Background music by Indian playback singer Mukesh, engaging some of the readers. 

These card boxes demand effort. To search for a book demands effort. And then getting disappointed when you like none of the contents in the box, requires a similar struggle to move on to the next box.  

The thrill about buying books is also in gaining entry in the immediate surrounding where these books are kept. It is about remembering not just the story inside the books but also the story around books; about recollecting right next to which books did I find Why I am a Hindu, or how Diary of a Wimpy Kid is at the back of the bookshop where they keep Arihant's 16 years Solved Papers for AIIMS.  

The delight is not just in finding a book. It is the labour around books that fulfills such moments of delight and these laborious moments that are mostly hidden away maybe in our bills, or the time you take in the queue, or how you would like the shelf could have been better cleaned. What makes a book worth is also the moments of its immediate surroundings. Someone has kept books there in a cupboard, this is called cataloging. A reader kept a book on the wrong shelf, this is called a mistake. You complained about the dusty bookshelves, next time maybe you will find the tray a little less dirty. This is called taking care. You may also find hardbound copies of that classic, or the rolled and yellowed pages in that book of poems and hence choose to buy something else.

Scene from Sahitya Akademi Library

This hidden labour is as much as a thing in motion as the book is. This kind of attention to the process of following the life around books or things-in-motion, returns our notice to the things themselves. When people say 'it feels like time is stuck in libraries', to understand this feeling we have to follow the items themselves. For their meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses, their trajectories. In libraries, the jacketed books, the yellowed books, the folded books, the dust that appears to never have loosen its track and always settling on shelves, the in-between spaces between two books, all contribute to secure that feeling even more apparent. The real thing called dust collects and contributes to timelessness.

A person who helped me out at a bookshop in Daryaganj rests at the back and is not employed by the bookshop. He says that he likes coming there and help with the sales. He has some idea of where books of which kind are kept. He confidently points, while sitting in his chair, to corners where cookbooks are, where coffee table books are, where JEE Main prep books are, where Yoga books are.

At Daryaganj, recently more of such 'sell-by weights' bookshops have come. At one of the bookshops, the seller tells me "We were earlier at Nai Sadak. We have been there for more than 10 -15 years. We came here 5 years back. All the other bookshops that you see around yourself have just come up. We are the oldest here."

The life of books is not just about the reader or till the time the book is being read or till the time someone in Daryaganj keeps seeing themselves as the oldest haven of books. The life of books is also about till the time the book remains in that carton.

Computer Science text books being used to support things. 

Circulation is not the word that I am looking for. There are books in houses that are used as paperweights, as a way to level something up, as a way to support the frail picture frame. Class 12 computer science books are kept underneath mixer grinder so that it does not fall off. Reading is not the only function of books. However, indeed, I have once read all those books. But what happens after reading that object. It is equally important to see what happens to a book after you read it. As much as there is 'before' side of the book, there is also 'after' side of the book.

One of the doors in the Community library of Sinkanderpur has this poster stuck.

Even in the 'before' part, some books will always remain at the base of the carton, unattended, sometimes attended. The labour behind books needs to be observed and valued as much as the book.  Even if the canvas bag is torn and weary, it is still being carried on someone's back. That back may be aching or might be on medication.

Scene from a Community Library in Sikanderpur