Crossword Book Store – a saddening experience

Last Sunday I went to the Crossword book store situated in the 1st floor of Shopper’s Stop complex in Andheri West. Though I had not planned to go there, I just happened to drop at Shopper’s Stop and thought to check it out. Generally I buy book after some research on internet and as then I was not properly focused as what to buy, I decided to go for the safe purchase – some Ernest Hemingway stuff. Another reason for going there was that I was running short of my collection and I was reading my last but one book!

No one in the shopping complex seemed to be concerned about the Crossword shop! I had to ask two people to get to the shop. When I finally located it, I was depressed – it was a tiny shop! Anyway, I entered only to discover that the store collection was even more depressing –

The half of the shop collection is dedicated to children with colouring books and some story books.

Among the rest half, the further half is devoted to Bollywood movies with VCDs/DVDs/CDs, film magazines and books on film personalities (You can’t deny the fact that you are in Mumbai!)

Now there remains the residue part which is allocated to general readers. The collection included –

Some Sidney Sheldon
Few John Grisham
A lot of Shobha De (yuckkkkkkk!!!!!!!)
A lot of Robin Sharma (yuckkkkkkk again!!!!!!!)
Some Paulo Coelho
Some Samit Basu
Some Chetan Bhagat
Some famous singular books like Interpreter of Maladies, The Last Mughal, The Kite Runner, Thousand Splendid Suns, Gora (Yes, the one by Tagore!), The Age of Shiva, Chowringee, etc.
And some new releases.

I couldn’t find a single book by Hemingway (the search was easy, as there were not much books in the shelves) and went up to the shopkeeper and asked him to find me some of his novels. When he came up with ‘Old Man and the Sea’ saying this is the only one they have, I moved my attention to somewhere else and fortunately got ‘The Pilgrimage’ by Paulo Coelho and very accidentally came across with ‘A Spot of Bother’ by Mark Haddon (I loved his ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time). I was happy to get these, though I was still looking for ‘The Warriors of Light’ by Coelho.

This was the first time I was visiting any Crossword outlet and I can swear that I’ll never visit it again. In Delhi my favourite book store used to be ‘Book Worm’ situated in the inner circle of CP, near PVR Plaaza. I had been to Galgotia also a number of times. Everytime I used to visit Book Worm or Galgotia, I used to curse myself for my bank balance! But here I was finding it difficult to get books worth of even 1000/-! I guess I will have to keep searching until I get that kind of book store here and till then I'll have to rely on British Library.