Some good ol' bookstore magic

So despite the wonderful efforts of India’s Amazon.com (their words, not mine), Flipkart, I do not look forward to the day when I will finally have to fish out my debit card to buy a book online.

I know my days are numbered. Three years ago, my old copy of Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting had mysteriously vanished and having finally given up on trying to find it in my now-upturned bedroom, I decided to hit the stores to buy it again.

It was an exercise in patience and restraint. Patience, because none of the bookstores seemed to have it. Restraint, because I was almost this close to pulling my hair out every time a store employee tried to coax me into buying the Alexis Bledel movie instead. I love Rory, I do. But the Disney movie was too cheesy-town for even a die-hard Swiftie like me. I finally found the book at Landmark in Phoenix during opening week, and nearly kissed the well-informed manager’s hand in the children’s section. However curiosity got the better of me, and when I reached home, I looked up the book on Flipkart and there it was. With the promise that it would be delivered to my doorstep within three working days. Sigh.

Do I regret my obstinacy now? Maybe a little, though not entirely, because I still feel the magic of browsing around a bookstore is still a lot more alluring that pottering about online. If it weren’t for several aimless visits to bookstores in town, I might have never discovered Henry Paget Flashman (on discount at the Bandra Linking road Crossword store). Or Jay Rayner’s The Man Who Ate The World, that was sandwiched between Tarla Dalal and Sanjeev Kapoor at Oxford. Buying online may be the wisest recourse for a woman on a mission (Locate Terry Pratchett Discworld novels, should you choose to accept it), but there are no moments of discovery. No pleasant surprises. I read half of Sunetra Choudhury’s Braking News, before I decided to put it back on the shelf because while it began nicely, it sagged in the middle. Online bookstores are wonderfully convenient, but you’d have to know what you wanted to read first and I’ve only made up my mind hours into the bookstore and five minutes before I head to the cash counter.

The romanticism can't last, something that Borders learned the hard way. Here's hoping it's a while before they sound the death knell for stores in India.