Copyright timesnownews
Stephen King once said “Books are a uniquely portable magic,” and while that is absolutely true, there is also a lot of intimacy in treasuring something you cannot carry along, something that is stuck in time but when people enter it, they are imaginatively ported to worlds unknown. The tremendous passion of hearing the creak of a hardcover, holding the weight of a paperback, running your fingers across perfectly placed stacks and breathing in the faint scent of old ink in the air, together, form a quiet symphony of memory and imagination. Such is the experience of a bookstore. For a reader, it is a feeling best described as witnessing heaven with eyes wide open.,In the city that forever romanticises the power of knowledge, where love often blooms behind the rustling of pages, and friendships are born in the shared silence between words, Delhi holds its bookstores close to the heart. Scattered across its old markets and quiet lanes are sanctuaries where time seems to pause, and stories wait patiently for their next pair of eyes to find them. ,Here are Delhi's three such havens of bookselling. Each is a temple of the page, a heartbeat of Delhi’s literary soul, still pulsing, still reading, still alive.,1. Bahrisons – Khan Market,Starting its journey in 1953, merely six years after the partition, was Bahrisons Bookstore. It came into being as a 25-year-old refugee named Balraj Bahri Malhotra arrived in Delhi from Malakwal (now in Pakistan), barely knowing what the future held. He opened a fairly modest-looking shop in the heart of what was then called the ‘refugee market,’ near Khan Market. The love for reading, donation of a gold bangle from his mother and a small loan became Balraj’s only capital., ,What captures the eyes and hearts about Bahrisons is how the origin story mirrors one of the city's own: displacement, rebuilding, hope, and the insistence on something enduring. The founder didn’t initially set out to open a bookstore, he sold pens, worked odd jobs, but it was reading, books, that beckoned. With the help of a mentor, Prem Sagar of Lakshmi Bookstore, he placed books on the shelves and the rest is history. ,2. Faqir Chand & Sons – Khan Market,Just a stone’s throw from the first, in the same buzzing lanes of Khan Market, stands this other beacon: the Faqir Chand & Sons bookstore. According to its current stewards, it was founded in 1951 by Faqir Chand, moving from Peshawar (as the Oriental Book Shop, 1931) after Partition to set up shop in Delhi. Its cramped aisle, the towering piles of books, the handwritten labels, this bookstore is popularly known for being the one to cradle books. A trip to Delhi almost feels incomplete without a picture with the iconic Faqir Chand bookmark, captured right outside the store. And for those who call themselves proud ‘Delhites,’ Faqir Chand is the beginning of their reading journeys, a childhood with comics, a college thrift buy, a rare edition stumbled upon. ,,In an age of big brand bookstores, Faqir Chand resists the slick polish. It reminds us that what matters is the depth, the soul, the memory embedded in every spine. It is a whisper from a calmer, slower era.,3. Sisters of the People Bookstore (formerly “Sisters Bookstore for Cause”) – Lajpat Bhawan, Moolchand,,,This third stop brings us gently from legacy to compassion. Nestled inside Lajpat Bhawan near Moolchand metro station, the bookstore run by the sisters of the Servants of the People Society (founded by Lala Lajpat Rai) is small, unpretentious, but full of purpose. Founded in 2002, the shop stocks pre-owned, donated books, many from kind souls cleaning out their shelves. But here the books aren’t just sold, they are sold with a mission: proceeds support “baalwaadis” in 12 slums of Delhi. This bookstore was never set up for its commercial value, it’s a sanctuary for readers and for giving. The shelves hold old Amar Chitra Kathas, cookbooks, essays, and many signed copies as well as rare titles one could pick up a book for as little as Rs. 10. ,,The shelves hold more than booksIf you wander through Delhi’s lanes of shelves and spines, you will find the echoes of many stories: of refugees rebuilding lives (Bahrisons, Faqir Chand), of literary innocence turning into lifelong love, of charity and community-care (Sisters of the People). These stores are more than just retail spaces, they are memory-keepers, culture-carriers, emotionally invested ventures. Their shelves hold more than paper and ink, they hold resilience, imagination, devotion, and compassion. Next time you pick up a dust-moted volume, remember, there’s a lineage behind it. Somewhere, time is sitting between the shelves, patient, watching us read.,,Here's something that precisely captures the true essence of Delhi's bookstores:,“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”,— Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
