Owning a bookshop was not a long-held dream of ours. It’s not something we had ever thought about. So long as we had our books, we were content to be readers.

 

It began, then, with a gripe. Our reading having steadily evolved over the years, branching out into odd little streams, it was no longer easy to find the books we wanted to read. Browsing in bookshops - something we had grown accustomed to throughout our childhood and a good part of our adulthood - no longer felt the same; there were too many distractions, and too few books that spoke to us. From the griping and complaining arose the faint kernel of an idea – could we do it? Could we set up the sort of bookshop that we were imagining? Should we?

 

At that particular moment in our lives, we were lucky to have the time, and the resources. And I suppose we did try but failed to come up with a compelling enough reason not to do it. This was May 2022, we were all emerging from the Covid lockdowns. The world was weary; we craved being able to go out, we needed human connection. For readers, this meant being able to once again walk into a bookshop, wander about for a good long while,  and buy something we could touch and hold and read a bit of. Weren’t we all just tired of clicking to buy? How would we ever discover something new? And so, with emotions running high, and aided by a blissful ignorance of everything it entailed, we made the decision - we were going to open our own independent bookshop.

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With zero experience in the book industry, we began by asking the most basic questions (how do bookshops get their books?), trying to figure out how it all worked. A few cold calls and emails later, a helpful publisher representative patiently guided us through the basics and helped with some key introductions. A few weeks after this, we had our first wish list ready, of the books we wanted. There were a few raised eyebrows, some hesitation, about these initial orders – these weren’t the bestsellers, we were told. We are okay with this, we said. We knew they were good books.

 

When we opened our doors four months later, in early October, we managed to have a small curated collection on our shelves. But the other side of this retail equation – the customer – was a complete unknown. Who exactly was going to show up, would we sell a book, an actual book? What if no one came? We had told ourselves that if no one came, that was alright, we would still enjoy running our little shop and we would read all the books, thank you very much. Bravado, that was unnecessary as it turned out. The readers did show up.. The city of Hyderabad is often maligned for not having a ‘reading culture’ – it is frustrating to keep hearing this annoying stereotype of our city – as booksellers, we can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. We have met scores of wonderful readers who support us and keep us on our toes, and we feel fortunate to be their neighbourhood bookstore.