I became a bookseller on January 2, 2021 by launching my store “The Buddha Grove”. COVID was still around. It had paused my daily life and gave me an opportunity to rethink my life. Everything that can go wrong in one’s life had gone wrong in mine. So, I felt like the perfect cue was to start from scratch. One also had to grapple with the fact of one’s own mortality as all of us were losing someone we knew to the virus. So, I gave a lot of thought to the fact that life is slipping away and what can I do with the rest of my time which is meaningful and adds value to the society at large. The desire to make the remaining years count was strong.
The idea of a bookstore had always been there in my mind as I always felt that Guwahati, a fast-growing city lacked good bookstores, places where people can browse and checkout books at their leisure.
The bookstores that remained despite the digital onslaught were mainly concentrating on academic books and guide books for competitive exams. I also felt the internet had made us intellectually lazy. We are giving up thinking for ourselves and just paying attention on what can be understood in one line or an image.
The art of reading helps us to research, investigate our questions and have a better understanding of the world we live in. We will be less prone to believing in fake news and rumours if we cultivate the faculty to think for ourselves by reading more and more books. My maverick blueprint of what I wanted can be encapsulated in this line, ‘I wanted a bookstore which develops into a creative space for exchange of ideas for everysection of society.”
While I set out to work on my idea, I started on a budget that was so little that it was laughable besides being impractical. But it made me fiscally disciplined watching every penny I was spending. When couple of visitors commented that this collection seems like someone has handpicked each book - it is literally true. While I started procuring books I focussed on classics and books I knew. I refused to pay any heed to the market demands. Slowly, as my readers increased, they taught me about other books and genres and my collection became more variedorganically.
Getting the contacts of publishers and distributors was a big challenge. It took a lot of time to finally reach the right guys who can help. Back then no one wanted to give any books on credit for understandable reasons. I had to buy books by paying cash. The retail business hinges on a credit period. You get some time to sell and then you pay your creditor. It was an additional strain on a small business with limited resources. i also didn’t want to dilute the emphasis on books while knowing just books would be economically tough. I didn’t want to do stationery, gift items or food as invariably they will bring more money and my focus will go there. I was obstinate to make it work just with books and I think it had worked out.
People keep talking of how they liked the ambience of my store, my interiors and lighting is pretty basic but it’s the books that add to the ambience. I also wanted a corner for second hands so there is something for every pocket. I had also introduced a lending library option for people wanting to borrow books and use our space to read/ study/work. While designing the layout I had tried to imagine myself as a user as to what it would like my bookstore to look like and then based on budget diktats I went ahead.
The first couple of years were very tough. I think one reason why I could survive and kept going was my naivety to worldly standards of success. As I evaluate those days, I realised that I was an introvert and that was my drawback. As an entrepreneur you have to be out there packaging and selling yourself all the time and it doesn’t come naturally to me. But I am better at it now. I had very few customers and I even thought of rethinking my idea as it seemed unworkable. Then a few people happened to jump on the TBG bandwagon which provided me the mental strength to keep the place afloat. Among those few I will mention a couple of them. One was Shibani Krishnatreya (then a student of Gauhati University student now doing PhD at IIT) who ran a writing group called the foldedgroup. She held a session on writing for her group at TBG. The energy and love and positivity her group brought to my store helped me. Then Teresa Rehman (noted journalist and author) pinged me that she would like to host a talk under the banner of her digital magazine ThumbprintNE that brought another group of intellectuals who seemed to appreciate what I was trying to create.
These events made me think if I hang in there, the folks who need such a place will arrive. Slowly more people started showing up and things improved. A lot is still needed for place to be economically viable but a lot of distance has been traversed. None of it would Have been possible without the support of my younger brother Neeraj Khanna who has been rock allowing me to try this crazy idea dipped in dreamy idealism.
My biggest learnings so far had been that we must be ready to suffer for our dreams. Persistence pays and there is that most elusive of gifts - timing. A lot successes and failures are about timing (luck). Things that are out of your control that can bring you down or lift you up. Just because it is unpredictable doesn’t mean that we don’t do anything. We have to play our part, do the little things, do good work and then blessings will come.
In future, I hope to have an infrastructure in place to host more events and different kinds of creative ideas. Ideas that will bring people together to discuss, debate and ideate while book sales will keep the place alive. I also hope to build up my Assamese book section and also procure books in other languages of northeast India.
Raghuvir Khanna is the owner of a bookstore called ‘The Buddha Grove’ in Guwahati
