Mr. Ambani, Please Give me a Bookstore

I am told wealth meaningfully transforms man’s relationship with things and people around him, placing him in a position of power in the relationship. Of what use is wealth and power if it is not wedded to vision. We are grateful to the wealthy corporates for their role in bringing the much-needed infrastructure and a life of dignity to the populace. But, why aren't bookstores part of that vision! 

No, I don’t have a business plan to run a profitable bookstore. Mr. Ambani, you have the wherewithal to think it through. I just need to put my gripe out there. Why isn’t Reliance interested in running a book store or support the ones crumbling under the deep-discounting practices of online stores?

No denying that majority Indians live in abject poverty. A small percentage has just begun their aspirational journey. A bookstore doesn’t strike as relevant or urgent considering we have just started on our way to being a prosperous nation.

But, from the ultra-rich we expect a vision of what society will be like when a considerable population shifts from a life of necessities to a life of choices. Many Indians clearly express the sense of having arrived. Somehow, these fortunate ones appear like hares caught in the headlights of affluence, confusing self-worth for net worth. They believe in owning a lot and owing nothing to others. And this upwardly mobile class being in close proximity to the ones below will pass on the values of aggrandizement unto that struggling majority. Self-transcendence is not a given. It needs an enabling environment. If we bank on Hindutva to lead us to light, we are going back to where we came from—a society ready to splinter on trivial matters. If we pin our hopes on material wealth to find us happiness and fulfilment, we are trusting animal instinct to lead us to rationality and purpose in life.

To bring us out of this unfortunate misery, we don’t need spiritual gurus or life-style coaches. We need people with open minds and a culture of learning, debate, and critical-thinking. At the very least, we need a nation of readers. Schools and universities were our temples of learning. But, they have only prepared us for the greenhouse of livelihood. Bookstores offer an escape into a space where mind breathes new ideas. They are veritable temples of self-learning. It's time tag lines evolved from ‘connecting people’ to ‘connecting minds’. 

We need bookstores that house all varieties of philosophies, the enlightened and the stupid; all forms of opinion, considered as well as cheap; humanities and self-helps; non-fiction and fantasy; biographies and critiques; mathematics and astrology; spiritual literature and erotica; academic texts and books for dummies; the prudish and the uncensored. All in one place. The institution of physical bookstores must remain afloat. I am afraid we as a nation might skip the phase of enlightened readership in our evolution.

We do not want Hindenburg reports to sound the death knell of our corporates. I would rather have them ruin investor wealth in supporting the culture of knowledge. Someone put in a word with the government that the bookstore arm of a business should qualify for CSR expenditure. Publishing business too? No... Ok, that too.

I visit Crossword. Poor guys mostly stack books about to enter public domain or the ones that are best-sellers (well-marketed appeasement literature). Why are philosophy sections shrinking? Where are the serious works of literature? Why is Jaggi Vasudev or Devdutt Patnaik the only medium of instruction in spirituality? Why do authors have to play their inept role of marketers?

Getting books on discount from an online store is convenient and economical. However, I like to date a book before committing myself to it. Where do I hold that initial conversation? I would like us to deliberate on books more than we deliberate on discounts. But where is the place for it?

Mr. Ambani, are you listening?

And, why Pune does not host an international book fair?