My grand-uncle T.S.Satyan’s photographs are on display at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Rampart Row, Kala Ghoda. The exhibition came to Mumbai from Tasveer.
Satyan is now 86. He is based in Mysore, but was here for two days for the show opening.
Read this 2002 article by Theodore Bhaskaran about Satyan’s work over here.
And here is something Satyan wrote in 1950.
T.N.Shanbhag, who passed away on February 27 this year, aged 85, was one of India’s great bookmen. He had a simple but clear understanding of the business of books: that there would always be people who wanted to buy them, and that they would buy them as long as they were able to afford them. This was how the legendary Strand discount was born.
It was a simple formula: a flat twenty per cent off on any book in the shop, unless the book was already being sold at a special price. The formula has remained the bookshop’s fundamental principle for over six decades.
Whether you’re a shop regular or a one-time visitor, you never have to remember to insist on the discount or even to ask for it; the person making up the bill will simply include it at the end, neither reluctantly nor with a flourish as if he is doing you a favour, but most matter-of-factly, because it is not just part of the store’s business policy but part of its ethic. They will never try to get away with not giving you the discount.
Shanbhag began his bookshop in 1948, inside the premises of the old Strand Cinema in Colaba from where the shop got its name. He used to call it a “hole in the wall”, but in its location off Pherozeshah Mehta Road in the Fort area, the Strand Book Stall today has the space for several thousand books from all over the world, packed into shelves all the way to the top as well as on the mezzanine floor at the end of a narrow staircase, along with assorted delights from all over India - the latest issue of Biblio, a couple of new arrivals from the Seagull in Kolkata, several slim delights for children from the Chennai-based Tara Books - and, not least of all, several salespersons who arrange themselves unobtrusively alongside the shelves.
Unbelievably, there is even space for a few chairs in case you want to browse. And you’ll never have the salespersons hovering over your shoulder asking if they can help you. They know that if you’re looking for something in particular, you’ll ask them. The rest of the time, you’re left alone.
At any time during the day, one of the salespersons is always on the phone, taking orders for books from the thousands of regular customers: from The Joy of Sex (which must surely be one of their most popular orders) to the new memoir by Azar Nafisi, chances are they’ll already have it tucked away somewhere; if not, they can get it for you, and always at twenty per cent off. Strand regulars also know that the most interesting books are always the ones kept in small piles near the phone with slips of paper tucked into the pages: those are the books that people have specially ordered, and there are almost always some interesting finds there. If you want one of those very badly, then they might just decide to give you the only copy they have and quietly order another one for the other customer.
One of the highlights of every new year, along with the classical music Janfest at St.Xavier’s and later the Kala Ghoda Festival, is the Strand Book Sale. All roads lead to the festive atmosphere of Sunderbai Hall in the New Marine Lines for the two week duration of the display. Inside the great hall is a great hunger for books. Mumbai is not a demonstrative city, and it is careful about getting as much as it can for its money; but inside the Strand sale, you will find ordinary citizens thrilling in the extraordinary experience of walking through a vast hall full of books.
Mumbai is used to crowds, and this one leaves the book-buyers unfazed. Their hands will ache from holding the steel handles of the plastic shopping baskets, but they will move along with the mass of people, criss-crossing the hall like a temple crowd, loading their baskets with books. Moms and dads will alternately babysit their children in the play area outside while the other parent battles through the crowds inside to emerge with their arms laden down with Strand’s well-known plastic bags.
The Strand sale is an inducement to excess, an orgy of book-buying. Nothing seems too expensive, not even when it’s finally your turn in the billing queue and the billing assistant tots up your total in an untidy scrawl over two or three pages of their little white and blue billing books. Then you cross over to the payment counter to get your card swiped, the charge-slip is impaled at the top of a small mountain of charge-slips, and you get the brief, efficient flash of a smile from the normally impassive counter assistant who hands you your bags when you show them your copy of the bill stamped “Paid”.
Did you really buy so many books? Where on earth will you keep them? The questions fleetingly cross your mind. But once a book has gone into one of those orange, blue or red baskets, it will come out only to be paid for, packed into the Strand bags, and opened and read on the long train ride or drive home.
