Turning the page

I have a habit that the family encourages. It occasionally goers spiralling out of control, but no one minds, beyond mildly grumbling that we have no more space for storage. And, no, it is not my shoe fetish, the one that my father teases me about (just to clarify, I do NOT have 189 pairs of shoes and not all of them are four-inch spikes either) relentlessly. It is not my dreadfully decadent tendency to read soap labels, nor is it the inescapable need I have to close cupboard doors and slide shut half-open drawers.

What I do, sometimes furtively and deviously, is buy books. Not always after a great deal of browsing and pondering, but by first genre, then author and then series. As a result, I have the strangest conglomeration of literature (in a manner of speaking) that I know of, mixing romance with crime, food with travel and ancient history with modern chick-lit. Eclectic, yes, eccentric, perhaps, exotic, very often. All of this works perfectly well in a library, in a newspaper format or in a logically considered discussion on literary taste, but not so sensibly when it comes to shopping.

But the way we do it makes more sense than the actual doing of it, if you know what I mean. Perhaps the first thing I do when I am anywhere near a bookshop, in whatever city I happen to be at that moment in time, is to find the most sympathetic face amongst the sales staff. It is very often male, and I use the age-old knowledge of the power of woman and smile beguilingly, until I have the chap’s attention, to the exclusion of any one else in our little ‘friendship’. Casually cheery chat, a little personal Q&A and I have a friend for life, which in the book-buying biz is the magic formula. So whoever it is remembers me, finds me what I want and almost always sends me a sweet greeting card for major festive occasions. I also get an occasional call asking where I am and why I have not been to the shop in a while, but those are part of the game and, after a point, I am actually interested in talking to the man.

So now I have people in my life who are not just kinda nice, as the phrase goes, but also truly useful, which is a bonus. There is Mahesh, who owns his own bookstore in the distant suburbs, who once in a while wakes up and gives me what I have asked for many moons earlier. Then there is Sanjeev, who is part of a well known shop and has actually found me two books in the short span of a week after I asked him for them. And there is a nameless but very helpful young man at a huge bookstore chain who always comes bustling up to me when I walk in and demands to know, persistently, what he can do for me.

Women in the business are very different. The same store with the anonymous gentleman once gave me Binnie, a young woman who was fast became a friend, never mind that she rarely found me anything I wanted to read. And at another equally extensive and reputed chain, I discovered Rima, ruthlessly efficient, wonderfully au fait with almost every esoteric title I threw at her and totally apologetic that she could not help me more when I needed it.

Soon I will be at one of my favourite stores in Delhi, trolling the shelves for reading pleasure. And, after I find it, I will beam fondly upon another old friend, whose name I can never remember, and thank him for existing. He was put on this planet and in that store just for me, I always believe. Just as all these very nice people were!