BENGALURU: The London Review Bookshop (LRB just like the journal) serves three important purposes. First, it serves as the sanctum sanctorum for the literary establishment in the capital city. I learned about the LRB (the journal, not the book store) in my newbie Twitter days, when there was much angst among Indian writers about a set of Perry Anderson essays heaping scorn on M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. After making my way though other fine essays in this journal, I decided to check out the review’s bookshop on 14, Bury Place.
Second, this bookshop also organises some rather excellent after-store hours talks, where award-winning authors of the calibre of Siri Hudsvedt or Slavoj Zizek can be heard over a glass of mostly free wine (the events are ticketed) and the price of the ticket is well worth the experience.
Thirdly, the LRB houses one of London’s finest cake shops. This small menu inspired by seasonal produce, beautiful cakes, a collection of fine white teas, perfectly acceptable coffee and most importantly, a jar of phenomenal chocolate pinwheel cookies makes this little cafe a place to while away time with a book.
The intellectual vibe of the LRB bookshop is so intense that I actually envision some of the books on its shelves in possession of serious telekinetic powers. There is absolutely no other way to justify my reading choices in this place.
I was in the LRB one day, mostly to partake of a chocolate pinwheel cookie, when a distinguished Southern Asian gentleman with a pointed beard, a wide-brimmed hat and a silver-tipped cane, swept authoritatively to the till. He conferred gravely with the young lady behind the counter. The conversation ended with a shake of the aforementioned lady’s head and a nonchalant shrug. Curiosity got the better of my reticence and I went up to the counter and asked, “Um, so what book did he want?”
“Piketty,” said the young lady and shot me a you-know look. “We have a long waiting list for Capital. Are you interested?”
I shook my head and returned to my browsing. And that was when the book spoke. I could have sworn that I heard a rasping “Read me...” I looked around. The bookshop generally stocked high-brow titles, mixing history, current affairs, literary fiction and poetry— graphic novels were nary in sight. So who was it that was calling to me? My eye settled on a thickish red volume that seemed to be standing out among the slim neat volumes it was stacked against. I found myself extracting something called Debt. I’m not sure what kind of paper the publishers, Melville House, used to make the cover but the whole corpuscular effect and design of the book allowed it to hold it’s own weight like a pleasantly plump dancer in a sea of ballerinas. Offering an anthropological perspective on financial inequality, there was no reason that I would pull out this book by Graeber apart from an esoteric one for I had never heard of Graeber. His work wasn’t prominently displayed in shops or discussed by the reviews.
Although I did go on to read and discover that Graeber was a radical anthropologist at the LSE and got into regular scraps via his incendiary essays. A particularly notable piece of writing by him is titled “On the Phenomenology of Giant Puppets”. It talks about why riot policemen hate giant puppets. Then, I heard another voice.
“Eaaa-aaaaat uuu-uuus.”
There was no doubt this time about what was calling me: the chocolate pinwheel cookies.
Visit this bookshop for your own encounters with books, scholarship and pastry.
(Shome is writer and blogs at www.zombiesandcomputers.blogspot.in)