Longtime landmark in changing time.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

This stall has been selling used books for decades. This evening, it is additionaly selling first-hand framed posters bearing such motivational exhortations:
“Whatever you decide to do, make sure it makes you happy”
“The pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow”
“If you are not happy, make a change”

The bookstall introduced the frames this week, for the first time in its long life—per an attendant. The development tells of an iconic establishment, in an iconic shopping district, attempting to adjust to the changing times.

Anil Book Corner is a modest establishment in Delhi’s Connaught Place (CP), and has been a part of the city landscape for more than 50 years. The founder, Anil, died in 2017, but the stall is continuing to stand, ably administered by its three helpful attendants. Explaining their reasons to stock the motivational posters, the attendants remark on the gradual decline in book sales.

However, please don’t cast aspersions on the stall’s collection of books. Here are hundreds of books, suiting a variety of literary discriminations. Do you happen to adore author Chetan Bhagat? He is here. Are you a Henry James fan? He too is here.

The attendants hope that the motivational posters might draw more visitors to the stall, boosting the book sales in the process. They took their cue from CP’s pavements, which are inundated with stalls exclusively devoted to motivational posters. In fact, the area’s many bookstalls are also permeated with the same character, densely stocked with books having motivational titles like… so many to pick from! Here’s one: Think Faster Talk Smarter.

As Anil Book Stall strives to remain relevant, do bear in mind that this fragile-seeming establishment has outlived many CP bookstores. There was another Anil, who had built a two-floor bookstore just a few steps away—Bookworm was among Delhi’s most esteemed bookshops. It shut down in 2008. Then there was Tekson’s bookstore. There was New Book Depot. There was ED Galgotia & Sons Booksellers. There was Central News Agency. There was Ahmad Bhai’s bookstall… oh look, the evening sun is setting by the stall—see photo. Nothing metaphoric about it. Merely an astronomical phenomenon repeated daily at this hour. The stall too will soon wind down with the day, and reopen the morning after. Perhaps, its survival rests on this daily repetition. As one of the posters on sale says: “Success is the small effort, repeated day in and day out.”