The Death of the Bookshop

The first bookshop I have a conscious memory of is Ferozesons on the Mall in Lahore. I remember being taken there often as a five or six year old with a quota of one book to buy. I recall the smell of new books and the sound of the press working in the background. It took me ages to figure out that not all bookshops came with presses attached to them. Ferozesons started my rip roaring affair with bookshops- an affair that I have managed to conduct and sustain with considerably more success than some others.

The next bookstore recollection has its roots in Karachi. The Pak American and Greenwich bookstores on Elphinstone Street (sadly renamed since) and Thomas & Thomas were haunts to which I was inexorably drawn. My parents eventually decided I was old enough to select my own books and the quota system was abolished. Having read through most of the Classics by the age of 13 I decided to embark on an “adult” reading career. This led to me a great deal of literature I, perhaps, should not have read so early on. I am still convinced that I was the only precocious 14 year old in Karachi to have consumed Gore Vidal’s transsexual fantasy “Myra Breckenridge” with a lascivious passion. As if all this was't enough, my siblings and I were members of the British Council library at Pakistan Chowk and the USIS library in the (now deserted) American Consulate.

Since then I have encountered numerous bookshops – Foyles and Dillons in London, Heffers in Cambridge, Blackstones in Oxford, Barnes and Nobles all over American, Kinokuniya in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Borders in Manila and innumerable others. When my young (then younger) friend M was going to college in DC many years ago, I couldn’t recall the name of any bars or clubs. I could remember the name of the nicest bookstore/café in town. He sent me a postcard to let me know that he’d located Kramerbooks and was working there.

Many years later I am amazed that Karachi – a city of 15 million people- does not have a single decent bookshop. My friends confess to buying books in malls and supermarkets. Some resort to Amazon or foreign trips. Islamabad fares a little better. A two floor bookstore has recently opened here and it is packed most evenings. There are also several second hand bookshops with an eclectic selection of titles. When I am at a Pakistani airport I am amazed to discover that I am often the only one among hundreds of people reading a book while waiting for a flight to be called. A few read newspapers. Most others just stare vacuously into the middle distance.

So what went wrong ? People just stopped reading books. And because of that people just stopped selling books. A quick look at web pages of the Orkut or Friendster variety shows that most Pakistanis either don’t have a favourite book or else there is a (proud) declaration that they don’t read. This is confirmed by visits to houses where the only book for miles around is a telephone directory. Clearly, there is an entire generation out there which has no intention of reading. I concede that books are expensive and are not within the reach of most Pakistanis. Ok. Point taken. But what about people who can afford to smoke Dunhills and still don’t read ?

I admit that these are all elitist arguments. They do not, for example, take into account reading habits in Urdu which may (hopefully) exceed English readership. All the major papers have literary reviews and “books” sections so I must assume that somebody reads. What disturbs me is that there are no visible signs (bookstores, libraries, readers) of a reading society. I desperately hope that anyone reading this trashes my views, shakes me out of my complacency and tells me that I’m totally wrong. I wait eagerly.