I will try!
I will try!
It was the book shop I went to
visit in Bag Bazar after many
years.
Earlier I lived in Exhibition road
area and often went to this shop
for it had a good collection of
fiction, non-fiction and other
books of general interest.
It was a unique shop in this
regard as all other shops in Bag
Bazar and Putli Sadak area
mostly sold text books as there
were so many university
campuses around and the roads
remain crowded with students
throughout the day and evening.
The students were often also
smartly- clad-in-dress students
of a women’s college in the area.
When you are young you want
to be around such company
hoping to make an acquaintance
with a suitable woman.
It was a time when Late Princess
Shruti, the only daughter of King
Birendra, too studied in that
campus. However, it was said
that she came and left in a car
and only her closest friends had
a time to look at her and talk to
her. Only a few people ever
claimed to have seen her at the
campus.
The bookseller running the shop
was an elderly man with a kind
face. He often was himself
reading a book silently. He
barely smiled at a customer who
entered his shop before his gaze
returned to the book he was
reading.
He did not mind if a customer
lingered long in his shop and
browsed through many books
before he left the shop without
buying any. He just smiled again
at him while he left.
He smoked often on his seat
when he took a break from his
reading. So in his shop there was
always a residual reek of tobacco
all the time.
Mixing with the scent of books
and glue it formed an aroma I
liked, while I leisurely perused
the books I took out from
shelves one by one. I carefully
placed each of them back from
where I had taken them as I did
not want to bother the seller
with any additional work on
account of my visit to his shop.
It was from here that I
purchased many titles of Charles
Dickens, D. H. Lawrence, V S
Naipaul and many others. Those
titles still remain with me after
more than twenty years. Finding
Diary of the last Indian Viceroy
Lord Mountbatain and the
stories of Gay De Maupassant
were some spectacular
discoveries I made at that shop.
These writers enriched my world
tremendously. I kept rereading
their work as they answered
best my anxieties in different
stages of my life.
I also bought from here many
books which I abandoned too.
One such book was by a classical
English writer half of which was
written in Greek between
English.
With the time however, my
reading became diverse like the
contents of my life. I had now
my wife and children who were
growing up fast demanding a
great deal of my time and other
resources.
Also, I shifted to a locality in the
south of Kathmandu which had
lower house rent and from
where Bag Bazar appeared too
far away and the Himalayan
Mountains glittered in the north
every morning as the sun rose. It
all occupied me so totally that I
was almost under a spell to only
focus on the urgent matters and
not to indulge.
So I did not go to this shop for a
long time.
Finding the garlanded framed
photo of the bookseller just
above his seat was deeply
saddening. His son, sitting on his
seat, on asking informed me that
a few years back his father
passed away and since then he
has been looking after the shop.
He just smiled as I said sorry at
it. Then I went to look for a few
titles inside the shop.
I found that now this shop had
so many titles from Nepali
authors too who wrote both in
Nepali and English. Beside now it
sold many text books too.
Many of the books were on a
heavy discount. Among them I
found a book which was a
collection of articles from a
journalist who wrote routinely
for newspapers in older days. It
was a collection of those articles.
I was never a big fan of his
writing and mostly ignored his
columns which appeared on
every weekend issue of The
Rising Nepal on Fridays and
other newly arrived English
dailies and weeklies. He then
had a good following and
readers were found talking
about his columns in a social
gathering.
I had heard some time before
about the death of that
columnist. He had lived to the
age beyond seventy writing his
scandalous columns almost till
the end while living a life mostly
supported by business and
political interests he promoted
in his writing, rather than by his
writing.
Now finding his book in my hand
at a discounted price my heart
filled with ambiguity. I knew his
name so well that I could not
ignore his presence in the book
shop. By his admirers he was
possibly entirely forgotten as his
book had no takers and it was on
a discount.
I decided to buy his book less for
reading more for keeping as a
souvenir.
In a way it will help me to invoke
the nostalgia of the age which is
slipping away slowly for those
too who have survived it, not to
mention those who have passed
on with it.
For the ever changing dynamics
of time has demolished many
old structures and has created so
many new landmarks at their
place that one feels at a loss
while seeing a familiar old city
disappearing and a new one
emerging which has no sign of
the one that has been replaced.
It is largely true for the people
too.
In such a tumultuous age, may
be, only a writer one was
familiar with, could help one
relive the age which seems so
distant now.
It was my love for the form not
the content that I decided to buy
the book, which had brought
together me as a reader, him as
a columnist and the book seller
who sold his work. We were
complete strangers otherwise.
Before I left the shop the son of
the late book seller asked me to
visit again. He was neither a
smoker nor a reader—I had
noticed. His eyes were restless,
besides. He was a man very
different from his father.
I said I will Try.
K C Bhatt
GPO box 20460.
Kathmandu.
