The book vendors at the Patri Kitab Bazaar associated garv (pride) and shauq (pleasure, interest, hobby) with their business, and frequently used these terms in their interviews. Often, they would talk about their lagaav (attachment) to the patri (pavement) and the business of selling books. They distinguish their community from other street vendors and street hawkers. While narrating their stories, they often found ways to communicate that their bazaar differed from other weekly or permanent street markets in Delhi and that selling books made it different. Selling books on the patri is not the same as selling everyday consumer goods found in most local weekly markets or LWMs (in official parlance), they implied.
All the Patri Kitab Bazaar vendors, whatever stock they may be selling, believe that books have a much higher value than any other consumer goods sold on the streets of Delhi. This is true, especially for vendors specialising in the study-material circuit. They believed their profession was contributing to the development and growth of education in Delhi – something they were incredibly proud of.
Puneet Kumar started selling books at the Patri Kitab Bazaar in 1972, following a period of garibi (poverty) and majboori (helplessness). He was one of the first vendors to set up in the Patri Kitab Bazaar, and believes that only “high quality” students come to his stall, where he sells NCERT and CBSE textbooks for much less than their original cost. “Mere ache relations hain in students se jo Civils ke liye parhte hain, aur ab kuch toh IAS bhi ban gaye hain” (I have good relations with the students who study for the civil services, and some of them have become IAS officers as well), he exclaims with pride.
“Hobby bhi hai, roti bhi”, said Asharfi Lal Verma about his business of selling books on the patri: “It is my hobby and my bread.” In a later meeting, he exclaimed: “Dekhiye, kuch kaam karne mein maza aata hai; agar hum chahte to dukan ya naukri bhi kar sakte the. Lekin patri par kitab bechna ek ‘alag experience hai” (See, some professions give plain joy; I could have done my business in a shop or gone for a salaried job. But selling books on the patri is a “distinct” experience). Asharfi Lal has spent more than twenty years as a vendor in the Patri Kitab Bazaar. He used to assist with selling books in a bookshop elsewhere in Delhi before becoming a street vendor in Daryaganj.
Rajesh Ojha, who sells a similar stock of books in a rented shop on Netaji Subhash Marg, made this enthusiastic and slightly exaggerated claim: “Mere hisaab se is bazaar mein kitaab bechne se achha kaam koi hai hi nahin. Ismein ‘enjoy’ hai. Aap jab kitaab chhantne lagte hain to time ka pata nahin chalta, bhookh-pyaas nahin lagti, itna maza aata hai, oho!” (According to me, there is no better profession than selling books in this bazaar. There is a lot of “enjoy” [enjoyment] in this profession. You do not care about the time you have spent sorting books; you can go hungry and thirsty; it is so much fun, aah!).
Like Ojha, most of the vendors I talked to who belonged to the traditional and study circuits spoke about the pleasure they derive from sorting (i.e. putting their knowledge to work). Sorting books, in fact, is key to bookselling at the Patri Kitab Bazaar. The books of Daryaganj are drawn from various parallel sources, such as paper markets; discarded stock from public, private, and individual libraries; remainder stock from publishers; and so forth. Booksellers derive pleasure and enjoyment from creating value out of books derived from these parallel sources. Their pleasure is linked to how they perform and choose to specialise in this business.
That contrasts with vendors who feel less lagaav with the book business at Daryaganj, such as AR Khan and Manmohan Singh, who suffer from greater financial instability. However, despite the insecurity and lack of profits, they have been part of this community for a long time, showing that this bazaar has space for both specialised and non-specialised sellers.
Related stories followed from almost all the vendors I interviewed. There was one common thread, however, with each vendor describing how selling books at Daryaganj is what Asharfi Lal calls alag or distinct: just as the market is officially regarded as a specialised weekly bazaar compared to other local weekly markets, the vendors too believe that their profession is specialised and more sophisticated than it may appear because of its location and operation on a patri in Old Delhi.
Let me introduce you to the booksellers who have actualised Daryaganj Sunday Book Market over the years, and how they “arrived” here.
For the vendors of Daryaganj, family and networks of kinship are the most common routes into the book trade. The seven famous Kumar brothers are an excellent example of this. Their father introduced them to the basic principles of hawking and bookselling. After selling books at different sites in the city – mostly pavements, bus stands, and railway stations – they discovered Daryaganj as one of the areas where bookselling could be pursued rather stably. Each of them has been in this business since they started working at an early age, and the two elder brothers are among the few vendors who had established the patri business from its days around Subhash Park. Vendors continue to bring their family members into the business.
The second typical trajectory the vendors follow to enter this profession is through mentors and intermediaries. 57-year-old Mahesh has spent 35 years as a bookseller at Daryaganj Sunday Book Market. His brother was in the business before him, but not at the Patri Kitab Bazaar. However, both brothers were trained by someone he refers to as their ustad (mentor/trainer). Mahesh informed me that his ustad had also trained other men. When Mahesh started, only a handful of second-hand book vendors operated at this site; the business has grown in the past two decades. While Mahesh has been able to earn a livelihood solely from selling books at the bazaar, unlike most vendors in the bazaar he is determined not to bring his children into the business. He would prefer salaried jobs for them. Like many vendors, Mahesh also senses that the book business in Daryaganj has no future because digital books and digital marketplaces will take over: “internet par hi bikengi kitabein”, he says – “Books will only sell on the internet”.
Family and mentors are not the only traditional ways to enter this profession. Divakar Pandey’s brothers signed up for the Indian army, but he could not pass the medical tests to be eligible to sit for the main examination. In his case, his profession became an exception in his family. However, Pandey didn’t immediately begin selling books at the Patri Kitab Bazaar. Before he started his business at Daryaganj, he worked for AH Wheeler in Rajasthan. He later moved to Delhi to work as a sales assistant for DK Publishing and Prakash Publications, located in the nearby Ansari Road. In fact, most booksellers at Daryaganj Sunday Patri Kitab Bazaar have engaged with the book business in more than one way, and some of them continue to do so, which either compensates or supplements bookselling at the bazaar.
Other vendors also navigated several professions before settling in Daryaganj. Ashok has been a bookseller at the bazaar for 25 years. Born into an underprivileged family in East Delhi, Ashok raised money for his family and his education through petty jobs such as pulling a rickshaw and hawking. After earning his bachelor’s degree in commerce from Delhi University’s Ram Lal Anand College, Ashok joined the New Delhi Municipal Corporation. However, he continued with other businesses, too, for a while, seeking ways to increase his income. Bookselling was only one of his several jobs, until it became a permanent professional pursuit. “Main sangharsh karta tha, kitabon ke zariye kuch bana. Chaar baje uthta tha, newspaper daalta tha, office jata tha, lunch mein magazine aur kitabein bechta that – aadmi ko samay ke anusar parivartan karna padta hai” (I used to work hard. Selling books gave me an identity. I used to wake up at 4 am, sell newspapers, go to the office later, and sell books during lunchtime. A man must change with the demands of the time.)
Bookselling’s capacity to reap profits and provide them with professional stability in the longer run made quite a few booksellers stay. Surendra Dhawan is an example. He turned his full-time profession as a freelance photographer into a part-time one and his part-time engagement with books into a full-time business. He told me about his transition from photographer to bookseller: photography was an exciting life that demanded different skills and constant movement across states and, at times, countries. He claims to have photographed Indira Gandhi, the former prime minister of India. It’s his favourite memory from the profession. Several such remnants of his previous professional life were evident in his excitement during the discussion (he was always keen about the camera I was using and advised me on improving my photography). I was sceptical. How is pursuing photography less lucrative for a person who clicked photographs of the prime minister than selling books at Daryaganj?
Dhawan replied that his shauq (interest, pleasure) lies in photography still, but it was not a sustainable living. Working as a photographer entailed an erratic routine spread over unusual places countrywide. He said he needed to stay in one place in the longer run: “Ab grahasthi bhi sambhalni hoti hai” – his family required his presence. Even though bookselling might not be as thrilling an experience as photography, he opted for bookselling because he saw this as a sustainable profession. Much like Ashok, Dhawan had already begun investing in the used book business on the side, and he could see himself making that into a permanent option that could work for him. A part of achieving this stability comes from a continuing familiarity with the mechanisms with which vendors operate within this bazaar.
Excerpted with permission from Old Delhi’s Parallel Book Bazaar, Kanupriya Dhingra, Cambridge University Press.
The book is free to read online till December 23, 2024.
