In Bandra, Birju Shaw’s Quaint Secondhand Bookstore Tells Many Stories

In Bandra, Birju Shaw’s Quaint Secondhand Bookstore Tells Many Stories

Divided neatly into two with the shoulder of a wooden bookshelf, Birju Shaw’s store is a modest affair not more than 8 feet wide. Set against the backdrop of a blue wall, it is punctuated with the dial of a wall clock stuck at a questionable 9:35. When asked his name, he announces it matter-of-factly while reaching for a stack of bright yellow cards. While the board hanging above his shop located on Waroda road reads ‘Topaz Old Paper Mart’, the card he hands over leaves you with no doubt regarding what his business is really all about: ‘The Book Store’, it proclaims proudly.

Secondhand books, scrap metal parts, CDs, magazines old and new and an assortment of curios and trinket line the store snugly as a small fan whirrs overhead. A weighing scale and a magazine stand mark either end of his little kingdom like bookends. He offers me a stack of magazines to sit on, which I accept gratefully as Ricky Martin smoulders from a CD cover next to me, and he calls out to his store boy to go and get us two chais in an unanticipated show of hospitality. I mention how I actually remember him from two years ago, with his store being one of the first few I had visited as a newcomer to the city, and his face brightens instantly as I recall having picked up old issues of Conde Nast’s that I couldn’t find anywhere else. “That is my job,” he beams. “Making sure that I have the books that people want to read, something that I have worked towards over the last ten years that I’ve been doing this.” 

33-year-old Birju hasn’t read a single book from the thousands that have passed through his ownership over the years though, having dropped out before finishing the tenth grade, but that hardly seems to hinder his quest to get to the bottom of what it is that his customers want most in their bookshelves. “I have created a network by now,” he explains thoughtfully, perched on a small wooden stool as steam rises and swirls from his chai. “I have friends in Delhi, Pune, Kolkata and Nasik whom I source from, and we all often discuss the most popular authors so we can get these particular books down and circulate them. Books come to me from various corners of the country, so you’ll always find a good variety,” he confirms. I am disinclined to argue.

His journey has hardly been a cakewalk though, with his life in Mumbai seeing an unlikely start back in 2002, when he came down from Dhanbad, Bihar, to catch a glimpse of his favourite Bollywood star, Salman Khan. “My cousin and I just got up one day and left for Mumbai to meet him,” his excitement is evident as he relates his story. “We were crazy about him, we used to just worship him.. we actually camped out for days outside his house, sleeping on footpaths, so we could just see him in person once and maybe say hello.” 

After the initial starstruck few days, Birju’s attention soon turned to finding a means for livelihood and his first job in Mumbai was a rather unusual one. There were new 5 rupee notes that had just been put into circulation, he recalls, and he would stand in line at the Reserve Bank of India for hours at a time to get bundles for ‘Marwari saabs’ who would give him generous commissions in exchange for his time and patience. From there, he flitted to selling agarbattis and working at tapris for a while before starting work assisting a vendor of pirated CDs in Colaba. He interrupts himself - almost like a sidenote - to mention that his affair with books actually started here, when he started helping out with the neighbouring shop that sold books.

By this point, it has become pretty evident that his resourcefulness and business acumen is matched by his flair for storytelling, and he starts painting a picture as he really gets to the meat of it. “It was just fascinating for me to see all these books, and the interest with which people would come by to buy them,” he recalls. “I started helping out whenever I could, and even got asked to join them but I didn’t want to be ungrateful to the kind man who had given me a job selling CDs, and even a roof above my head at the time. It is never worth turning your back on people like that, and letting them down.” 

He confesses with a quiet and resounding sense of integrity, “That is one thing I have never done. I failed my tenth standard examinations and left papers blank, but I have never once cheated in my life. Everything I have done, I have done with my whole heart, or not at all.” 

Perhaps it is true that you find your way eventually to where you’re meant to be regardless of the detours along the way, I muse, as Birju goes on to explain that shortly after turning down the job offer with the secondhand bookseller, the shop selling pirated CDs where he worked was raided by the police with the owner and the employees all being arrested. “The police really beat us up badly that night,” he recalls, as calm and conversational as ever. “Bahut maara. My arm started bleeding as they kept at it and slowly, when they saw how much I was bleeding, they started to get worried. One of them took me aside, cleaned me up and let me go. The CD shop was shut down, and I got my sir’s blessings to go ahead and join the bookstore I had had my eyes on for so long.”

After working there for a couple of months, Birju saved up enough to buy himself a secondhand Kinetic scooter and started doing the rounds of various bookstores in the city to see what the loot was like. For seven years, Birju rode his bike to and from almost 200 stores a day, rummaging for books and magazines that he could sell to the pavement book vendors at Flora Fountain. “That also eventually shut down in 2013,” he reflects. By this point, I am personally infuriated by the number of challenges he has navigated along the way and floored by the nonchalance with which he is relating every jaw-dropping turn of events. He seems equal amounts amused and worldweary as he smiles at my reaction and continues, “I did this for about 7 years. Riding around visiting 200-300 book stores every day on my bike got really tiring after a while, though, and I’m not as young as I used to be.” 

Birju made the gamechanging decision of renting out space in the prime locality of Bandra for his shop at this point, a veritable gamble for a father of two. His wife is a housewife, and he decided they should move out of their rented apartment in the area to a plot that he owns in a Dombivali shanty - a sensible decision looking back, he concludes, lamenting the obscenity of the rent in the area. “I couldn’t pay rent in two places in such an area. I have an 8-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter and I am going to make sure they both get a good education.”

The light outside starts to fade as his story brings us back to the present, sitting in the tiny nondescript store trying to capture a lifetime of vicissitudes. I can’t help but ask about his opinion on Salman Khan now, after the recent hearing. “See, Ma’am, anyone can make a mistake,” he says, with no qualms about his opinion. “The news has made him seem like a villain, and I don’t know what actually happened in the accident. But I think that he has also saved thousands of lives with his social work and Human Being - have you heard of Human Being, ma’am? His company has given back much to society and I don’t think we can forget that and hold one mistake against him forever.” 

Still definitely a fan, then. 

Birju has some very interesting views of a diverse range of topics as it turns out. Gautham Ashok, a journalist who has visited his store before, recalls, “I asked the man here for ‘The Fall’ by Albert Camus and not only did he know instantly which book I was looking for, we ended up having a full-blown discussion on existentialism over its purchase. When I asked him if he’d read the book, he said that he hadn’t but had talked to several people who had over the years and picked up on the themes. That was incredibly impressive.” 

Besides the reading material, there is a potpourri of items on the left including cummerbunds, ornate metal boxes, cardboard boxes filled with more books and one large, black piano that he explains is from London. “This piece stopped being manufactured in 1945,” he explains. “I spent a lot of money on that one, but I know what it is worth. I’m sure that someone from the film industry will pick it up one day for a shoot.”

Birju’s tenacity and passion for the written word despite his circumstances is undoubtedly impressive but I can’t help but wonder about how business has really been doing. What about the future of this bookstore? “Business hasn’t been great lately,” he admits frankly, surprising me with what comes next. “I’m actually going to be giving up this space very soon, as soon as I can get a new tenant. People haven’t been coming to the store as much as they used to, I think I’ll go back to my old job in dealing with wholesale. It’s important that I make ends meet.” 

Enduringly stoic throughout our conversation, I have to admit that I have gained a certain respect for this man with the nerves of steel. There is a dignity and honesty that he brings to his work - that he brought to this conversation - that is refreshing for how unembellished it is. This is man who has seen his fair share of curveballs in his time, and is ready to meet those in the future with his weathered smile and a fresh batch of old books.

He is certain that he wants to continue selling books. “This is my life now,” he smiles. “I am very fond of all these books and want to continue giving people access to something that I didn’t have in my childhood myself.” 

I thank him for his time and confess that I haven’t read a book in a terribly long time, and ask him to suggest one. He reaches for Orhan Pamuk’s ‘My Name Is Red’. “If you don’t like it, you can always come back and exchange it,” he says amiably, as he shuts the doors to the storage space full of promise under the floor of his shop. “I’ll have some more books to show you by then.”

Birju’s store is located at the beginning of Waroda Road, right off Hill Road in Bandra West. Swing by to explore his collection and pick up a couple of great-smelling copies of books you’ve been meaning to read, this is a store we’d like to have around for a while.

All images by Furqan Jawed.

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