“Bookshops are one of the few spaces that uphold democratic values, social justice and freedom of thought and speech. Bookshops are our be...
“Bookshops are one of the few spaces that uphold democratic values, social justice and freedom of thought and speech.
Bookshops are our best hope of keeping truth alive, to help us speak up, more loudly, with more courage, each time our voices are silenced by oppressors.
Bookshops are spaces that bring us together, help us empower ourselves with knowledge, to fight back our oppressors.
We will not be silenced. We will not die.”
Recently, in the midst of despair and uncertainty, a Facebook memory showed me something I had posted three years ago.
Being a small business owner in India is really tough, more so when it is a bookshop. Millions of people in our country have never been inside a bookstore. Every day we meet people who have never read a book outside of their syllabus or course curriculum. Many of them do not even have proper access to books. It is then unsurprising that we as a society are slow in responding to problems and coming up with well-reasoned solutions effectively, including the recent Covid-19 pandemic.
Even before we had a physical store, back in 2014, we started Walking BookFairs because we wanted to make books accessible for people all over the country, especially in rural areas and for...
