Kitabkhana
Gautam Patel
Sometimes you really can’t have too much of a good thing. Amrita and Samir Somaiya have done the city an enormous service with their new bookshop, Kitabkhana. Of all the bookshops in the city, it’s this one that has the most marvellous space—high ceilings in an old building, lovingly restored, the wrought-iron work retained and the woodwork polished and gleaming. It reminds you of the great bookshops in university towns like Harvard, and that shouldn’t be surprising since Samir Somaiya is an alumnus of both Cornell (where he will be teaching this summer) and Harvard.
Two things distinguish Kitabkhana: first, it is a bookshop. That means books. Not stuffed toys and teddy bears, CDs and DVDs, computer games, perfumes or stationery. Just books. That, in itself, is remarkable. The second thing is its location. It’s right there at Flora Fountain (see map below), next to Mulla House and the Davar’s College building. That means it opens onto a public area like Hutatma Chowk and is surrounded by graceful and elegant buildings of a lost era. The space might have been anything—a corporate office, a bank, a department store. None of those uses would have added anything to the location and area around it. A bookshop does.
[1]At present, the selection is a little disorderly. This can be disconcerting (you shouldn’t expect to find Danielle Steele sitting on top of Ben Okri, but there you have it). You’ll still find some treasures here, stuff you won’t easily find everywhere and I have every reason to believe that, given time, it will stock books you can’t get anywhere else. The staff is receptive, gentle and obviously very proud of the place.
Food for Thought
At the back of the space is a small food counter run by Kapil and Reshma Sanghi. There are cupcakes and desserts in the case but the surprise is the eatery to the left. It’s a warm, comfortable space at the end of the bookshop, but not cut off from it. The food is vegetarian and there’s no liquor served but that hardly matters. Reshma has a sure and subtle touch. The presentation is excellent as is the tableware. The salads are exceptionally good, as is the pasta. Kapil recommended the no-besan-no-fried vada pav sandwich and I suppose it’s to some people’s liking, just not mine. The ginger lemonade is a wonderfully refreshing drink, and not too sweet.
A place to keep in mind and to drop in as often as you can.
Here’s the write-up from the Mumbai Mirror; and the images below are a gallery of (19) photographs I took there last week.
Update; 1 April 2011
I went back in late last evening on my way back from court. The ginger-lemonade again at Food for Thought, a great way to close out the day. To my great pleasure, the bookshop has got itself very much more organized in a very short time. Unfortunately they were closing a few minutes later, so I had to defer a browse till this afternoon.
What is about Kitabkhana that just makes it work as a bookshop? I think there are two or three different factors at play here. First, one isn’t restless because there’s just so much space. Smaller bookshops hem you in and make you edgy. Second, as I said, it’s only about books and nothing else. One other bookshop in a crowded area feels like a circus, and another, part of a bewildering complex of shops in a dizzying mall, is a subterranean maze with no apparent order. Bookshops demand orderliness, quiet and space, and this one has it all. Plus the fact that you can pick up a book and browse through it over a coffee without being followed by some security guard who sees you as a potential shoplifter.
KK is welcoming and gentle and spacious, and that’s what the best bookshops always give you. It’s also curiously unthreatening: I saw many people (footfalls have visibly increased) stopping to chat with some of the staff, just saying how much they liked the place and there’s a sense of pride in having something of this quality in our area. Of course KK beckons readers; it’s also a place where readers feel they belong, and that’s something truly special.
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