Last weekend I went to Nagar to see my parents and celebrate Gudhi-Padwa with them. In Hindu rituals, Gudhi Padwa is considered as one of the most auspicious occasions and as it is a beginning of Hindu New Year, it is chosen as the best day to start new things. 75 years back my friend Nikhil Dharmadhikari's grandfather chose the same occasion to start a book shop called Prabhakar Pustakalay. Today Prabhakar Pustakalay is considered as one of the oldest book stores in Nagar and known for giving an honest and transparent service to the customers and a place where you can find rare books.
I was invited to the Satyanarayan Pooja on Sunday. It is a small but nicely organized store proudly presenting the history of its birth. There was a small album with black and white old photos of my friend's family. One of the newspaper cutting was showing a small introduction of how things started in early days and how the founder struggled to make it happen. People came and congratulated Nikhil's father for carrying on the lamp ahead and I could clearly see a "feel of satisfaction" of Dharmadhikari Kaka's face. When they asked the question, who will be taking care of this store after you? He proudly said that it's his next generation. I didn't believe it as Nikhil and his brother both are software engineers and settled in their lives. I didn't expect they will carry on the tradition.
But when I asked Nikhil what he thinks, he said "We are going to do it. We will be bringing in latest technology and modernity in this shop. The day will come when Prabhakar Pustakalay will compete with other book publishers worldwide". I took it lightly and laughed at him but what I really appreciated was Nikhil's attitude. It's great to see our generation, even though technically, intellectually, economically and materialistically considered forward than their ancestors, still value the feelings and traditions. Not only he wants to keep the things going but also wants to change according to the time and that's really a good sign.
Nikhil and his brother will both be having a MBA degree in few years and I will not be surprised if they take their family business to a new horizon. And who knows this could be the first blog which introduced Prabhakar Pustakalay on internet :-)
Wish you all the best guys!!!
3 comments:
It is indeed a delight to visit such a place and to see it prosper through generations, but I fear the onslaught of big chain bookstores will drive such players out (what Walmart did to many small retailers) or only leave niche markets to them.
exactly, there is going to be a cutthroat competition and local bookstores need to be prepared for it.
Every small and big town in Maharashtra or for that matter India has it's own book store and they have been catering to book lovers through generations now. Threat of big chain stores has driven lot of such family owned first second genration stores in Canada America out of buisness. As such with people being literally glued to TV serious book and newspaper readership is on the decline. I suppose it would be long time before Indian market sees that kind fo decline, with the growth in literacy and awareness there will always be new readership for decades to come. But as a fist step if these small family owned stores unite to form a chain, they would certainly find loyal patrons and volumes to ward off threat from big chain stores. More over they need to invent creative ways of offering the content e.g. CDROMs or online access etc.
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