BENGALURU: It wouldn’t be wrong to call Bengaluru a city of book lovers, with several bookshops scattered across the city seeing throngs of people every weekend. This thriving book scene has both second-hand and new releases of all genres on offer for bibliophiles, but a bookshop dedicated to antique and collectable books is unheard of.
“It is difficult to find good rare books in India. In fact, the best rare books, especially on topics about India, are always easier to find in the UK or US,” says VR Ferose, a San Francisco-based technologist of Bengaluru origin, and ardent bibliophile who seeks to change that with a dedicated collectable bookstore.
A brainchild of Ferose and book collector-author Pradeep Sebastian – the Antiquarian Bookworm will open on November 18 within the premises of the already beloved bibliophile haunt The Bookworm, on Church Street. A collection of around 2,000 rare books, including signed modern classics, finely printed letterpress books, illustrated books, books about books and rare South Asian books, will be on offer.
“There are only three or four antiquarian/rare bookshops in India, and this will be the first of its kind in Bengaluru. Today, in India, if you want to collect, you have to mostly look to online international rare book shops where you can read descriptions of the books but not see and handle them for yourself,” says Sebastian.
He continues, “The Antiquarian Bookworm will give book lovers a chance to be in physical contact with these collectable editions. We want to give bibliophiles and book collectors in Bengaluru an opportunity to come and handle these rare and beautiful books and to nourish and fuel their desire to collect.”
According to Ferose, the desire to collect books is like the desire to collect art. He says, “Sitting here in Silicon Valley in the midst of technological evolution and an increasingly digital world, I see a lot of people leaning towards more analogue things. There is beauty in the physical and tactile feel of a book that will give you a deeper sense of history than anything else.
If you see art as a collectable, rare books are an accessible form of that.” To ensure that more people can access them, the duo has ensured that the books will be available at a large range of prices. “We want to have rare books accessible to people at very reasonable prices – the range starts from `1,000 but can go up to `10 lakh,” says Ferose.
If you are unsure about book collecting but curious to see what antique books are all about, you can drop by to check out a few special editions from Sebastian and Ferose’s collection. Books on display will include those signed by stalwarts like BR Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru, Swami Vivekananda, John F Kennedy and several Nobel laureates.
“There is a presentation copy of a book that Gandhi gave to Tagore, and another that Tagore gave to Gandhi. There is just one copy in the world, and I think people should see them, so I’m going to keep them in the store so people have access to see it and feel it,” says Ferose.
Krishna Gowda, the owner of Bookworm, expects a positive response from Bengalureans. “We’ve noticed that there is a good demand for rare, fine and signed books, but very few bookshops cater to these increasing demands. In my experience, Bengaluru’s readers always support brick-and-mortar bookshops,” he says.