New Delhi: A small bookstore operating out of a posh south Delhi colony market has decided to down shutters after 30 years, with the owner citing difficulties of keeping pace with new buying trends.
‘Fact and Fiction’, a quaint store nestled in the Basant Lok market in Vasant Vihar here was once always packed with bookworms who were drawn to its eclecticism.
Ranging from children’s books, classics, to translations the store was the go-to for people looking for new arrivals as well as rare books. The shop stocks itself with books on literary fiction, religion, cinema and philosophy besides those on travel, music, science, history, wild life, cookery, ecology and economics besides poetry.
“The world has changed and so have people. They are not many people coming to the shop these days as was the case a few years ago. And as most of the book buyers have shifted to e-commerce profits of bookshops have gone down. That is why I am being compelled to close the shop down” says Ajay Vikram Singh the owner.
Die-hard bibliophile Singh is fastidious about what he stocks taking care to populate store shelves with eclectic books and those which are not readily available. Inside the shop there are hardly any signs demarcating the sections but that poses no challenge for regulars.
“As our customers are frequent visitors they could easily recognise the specific shelves, stocking up the books they wanted” Singh said.
The owner often helps readers sift through the titles to get the book they were hunting for.
Singh started the bookstore back in 1986, about which a friend and noted journalist Vir Sanghvi wrote in book ‘To North India with love’ that was edited by Nabanita Dutt.
“Against the advice of his land owning family which urged him to go into agriculture or industry, Singh prepared to open his own bookstore. The only space he could afford was in the then remote Basant Lok shopping complex. Even that space was not very large. But Ajit Vikram Singh, my closest friend had decided that somehow he was going to make it work,” Sanghvi wrote.
“I was impressed by the dedication with which he took up the challenge of getting literature to the public, not only did he choose every book himself but he sat in the store and personally sold each one” the former school mate of Singh in Ajmer wrote.
A science graduate from St. Stephen’s College, who at first chose to farm in Dhampur in Uttar Pradesh, later followed his passion and started a bookstore in the capital city to “quench a thirst for books.”
The store does not boast a fancy appearance with a small door opening out to a bustling cinema. On the outside of the modest single room shop hangs an instruction for visitors “No food, No Drink.”
On the inside, however, the shop has been neatly shelved like a small library and attracts plenty of book lovers, Anshu, a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said.
Just a few kilometers away from JNU and the Indian Institute of Technology this store attracts students and faculties from these institutions as well.
“It’s sad to hear the book shop is being closed, I am a frequent visitor here for quite some time. This might be my last visit to Fact and Fiction,” Anshu added.