New Delhi’s oldest bookshop retains ‘poetic chaos’ and timeless charm: ‘here, books find us’
- Faqir Chand Bookstore – now run by the founder’s great-grandson – retains the same character it had when it opened in 1951
- The shop’s maze of books and lack of modern-day technology link customers to a ‘time gone forever’ in India’s fast-evolving capital city
In New Delhi’s fast-evolving Khan Market, the Faqir Chand Bookstore is like a space frozen in time.
“They must have had a passion for reading, because after surviving something as disastrous as the Partition, they still had the courage to open a bookstore and not something that’s easier to sell,” said Abhinav Bamhi, 26, Faqir Chand’s great-grandson and a fourth-generation custodian of the shop.
Bamhi has been a part of that change but said he finds solace knowing that the bookshop is one place where “time has stopped”. The subtle shade of yellow in its shutters, the font of the store’s name, and the maze of books inside the 1,500 square feet area (138 square metres), are all tinged with nostalgia for Bamhi and others who have frequented the shop for decades.
For writer Mayank Austen Soofi, who chronicles the city and its people in his blog The Delhiwalla, the bookshop is “a foothold to stability in the furiously transforming Indian capital”. He added that the shop and its owners offer a contrast to the stereotypical “social comedy of the upper classes” in Khan Market.
“It is a tangible space linking us to times gone forever, but whose histories continue to aggressively shape our present,” he said. “At a time when we all are digging deeper into our echo chambers, here’s a bricks-and-mortar space in the real world giving a safe space to all.”
01:40
92-year-old grandmother in India proves you’re never too old to learn
