There are two bookshops in Shillong that I love to visit: Sujit’s National Book Agency and Bahrit Majaw’s Ri Khasi Book Agency. Both the ow...
There are two bookshops in Shillong that I love to visit: Sujit’s National Book Agency and Bahrit Majaw’s Ri Khasi Book Agency. Both the owners are close friends of mine.
Sujit’s medium-sized shop is in the heart of Khyndai Lad or Police Bazaar, the commercial hub of Shillong. It is divided into two sections: one faces the main street and stocks textbooks and stationery; the other faces a passage inside the busy commercial complex where the shop is located and is stocked with the most eclectic collection of books I have seen in Shillong.
The weightiest tomes in world literature – Don Quixote, And Quiet Flows the Don, Middlemarch and A Suitable Boy, for example – jostle for space with bestsellers and local publications. My own books, poetry and prose, are conspicuously displayed. Sujit never fails to pick up Around the Hearth and exclaim, “This is one of my bestsellers, Bah Ap. I have sold so many copies!” He makes me feel like a celebrity, and his words of praise always warm my heart.
Bahrit’s Ri Khasi is a different world altogether. It occupies the entire basement of a large building near Mot Phran, another of Shillong’s busy commercial centres. Chaos greets me whenever I enter the shop. The bookstore stocks all the textbooks anyone around here...
