It has always intrigued me, this having a blog thing. Is it a diary that for some inexplicable reason I want everyone to read? Is it a way of sharing random thoughts that my gmail status message or facebook wall can?t cover? Is it a way of having something to say that doesn?t find the space in the spaces where I already say what I want to say? Is it just an exercise in rampant egotism, in self-glorification, in showing off?
See, I don?t know. I don?t know why other people do it, though I do often enjoy reading what they have to say. This, then is an exploration. Books, music, food, television, might find their way in. So will news and politics, one way or the other. Maybe the way a newspaper functions, may be some defence of the media in these times when we are blamed for everything (how important we sound), may be a little poking fun at people and things.
Or, it just might be about all my pet peeves.
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For an indigent journalist scraping the barrel for a bit extra, Strand Book Stall was a haven. Mention a book you wanted to read and fabulous discounts were thrown at you. Of course Strand and Shanbhag did this for all book worms and there is no other bookshop in Mumbai, or maybe even the world, that envelopes you with a love and reverence for books the way Strand does. And what a treasure trove. A tiny space, shorn of all the gloss and fripperies we have come to associate with book shops, Strand was yet packed with gems. And packed with people who knew and had read all those gems. There was no author you asked Shanbhag about whom he did not know. And in his absence, the other staff filled in. The last couple of years, Shanbhag, 84, had been ailing and so meetings had become unfortunately rare.
Mumbai is often – and perhaps even sometimes rightly? – presented as a city of philistines. But Shanbhag was a city institution who broke all those myths. He and his shop towered above the world of books, and when Shanbhag spoke, everyone had to listen, sometimes reluctantly but always reverently. He was always on the side of the writer and the reader and worked his business around that.
With his death, Mumbai has lost a very precious part of itself.
So have I and countless other fans like me.
(A version of this appeared in the DNA dated February 28)
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