[Reader-list] What did the books do to you?'

[shivam]

Dance bars, yes. Books, no!

By Lindsay Pereira
Rediff | May 24, 2005
http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/may/24lp.htm


Mahesh Kumar would sit quietly, precariously, atop a small pile of
books, watching Mumbai go by. I had known him for months by then, and
he would recognise me from a distance. When I stopped by his little
bookstall -- the grand facade of Churchgate casting its shadow on us
both -- he would jump up and, almost immediately, whip out his latest
acquisitions.

The last time, there was Michel Houellebecq's Atomised. A fairly new
Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man. A faded edition of Khushwant Singh's
Delhi. And James Kelman's How Late It Was, How Late. I remember buying
everything but Delhi, telling him I had a copy.

Mahesh knew exactly what to tempt his buyer with. He managed, as he
often had before, to surprise me with his suggestions. When a young
woman approached, he would reach out for Paulo Coelho without batting
an eyelid. She would pay and leave. No words were exchanged, and the
transaction would last little more than a minute.

"How do you do it?" I asked him. "Do you know these authors?" He
laughed wildly, telling me he had never been to school. He couldn't
read the alphabet, attempted one Hindi paperback every six months, and
wrote a monthly letter to his mother who lived in Chhapra. That, for
him, was all the contact with reading or writing of any kind.

He managed solely by paying a great deal of attention to his
customers. With one eye firmly on the crowd passing by (he insisted on
calling out to regular or potential buyers every five minutes), he
told me about his "system" -- Paperback thrillers in the top and
lowest rows. Penguin paperbacks in the second row, current pirated
bestsellers in the third, everything else spread across the fourth.

Depending on the row you reached for first, Mahesh could gauge -- and
pretty accurately at that -- the kind of books you were most likely to
buy. What you wore, the kind of mobile phone you carried, the mood you
were in and the expression on your face – these were pointers he then
used while quoting prices.

Armed with this information, I tried confusing him a couple of times.
By reaching for Michael Crichton, for instance, when it was really
Colm Toibin I wanted. He would ignore my childish attempts, put away
the Crichton, pick up Toibin, and name his price. I stopped playing
that game with him a long time ago.

All along that paved pathway, stretching from Eros to Flora Fountain
and beyond, were others like Mahesh. Boys far from home, hawking
literature in an alien city, with an understanding of its denizens
that went beyond the merely perceptive. They would offer Playboy to
teenagers asking about Windows for Dummies, and it turned out the kids
wanted Playboy all along. They discussed the pros and cons of titles
by Robert Ludlum, relying on testimonials from past customers to
recommend or dismiss a book. They knew, somehow, that they ought to
charge more for a Faber & Faber imprint. And they delineated, neatly,
the literary from the pulp fiction. Years ago, one of them asked me to
consider reading Patrick Suskind, saying he thought I'd like him. It
turned out I did.

In time, I stopped trying to understand Mahesh. I gave up analyses of
his methods. I simply stood by his side, letting him do what he did
best. He would pull up some titles, push others out of the way, poke
and prod the many heaps surrounding him, and surface, minutes later,
with something like David Mitchell's Number 9 Dream. "Yeh aapko accha
lagega, saheb," he would smile. I would pay up, knowing he was
probably right again.

Mahesh doesn't sit there anymore. He -- and the others like him --
have been asked to leave. Selling books at that public space is now
illegal. The pathways are easier to navigate now, apparently. Nothing
stands between Flora Fountain and the railway station anymore, except
people, and a few more people. Nothing shocking like Vladimir Nabokov,
Emile Zola, Gunter Grass or William Shakespeare to stop you from
reaching that train on time. Nothing but a piece of dirty cardboard,
propped up against a railing near Churchgate, with the words: 'What
did the books do to you?'

I walk past those empty spaces quickly these days. And sadly. In the
state of Maharashtra, where I live, dance bars are perfectly okay.
Boys who sell books, however, will not be tolerated.