CHENNAI: In a discreet corner inside the compound of Hotel Connemara, now Vivanta by Taj, sits Nalini Chettur. And right behind her, in a small 125 sq-ft room is a trove of books piled high to the roof.
Names like Jhumpa Lahiri, William Dalrymple and Alexander McCall Smith catch the eye. From travel anthologies to sojourns into Korean history, she has it all.
Her little store ‘Giggles’ goes a long way back in time and has grown into the environs of Madras. “It was back in 1974,” she says, tracing time back to when she was a young ambitious woman who wanted to set up her own bookstore.
It’s a single book that pushed her into making that `1,000 investment and get a little makeshift store running, four decades ago. The name of the book? 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, about the 20-year correspondence between the author and a bookseller.
Recently, Nalini was asked to move her little store outside the compound of the five-star hotel. But she doesn’t appear fazed as she pulls out books based on our preferences. “Perhaps you’d like this,” she says handing this journalist a copy of the Pulitzer prize-winning work All The Light You Can See. Pulling out a book for every person, Nalini manages just fine with her old-school phone and poor signal even as she squints in the heat, sitting by her stack.
Nalini is also perhaps the only bookseller who knows the readers in this city like the back of her hand. All of her books handpicked and suggested to her, even by her readers, sit in pretty covers out in the shade. But not long ago, her store was flushed out during the floods.
Regaling us with tales of meeting authors like V S Naipaul when they had come down to her store, she fills the pauses between her excited suggestions and musings. But the underlying worry of having to find a new place that would take away the soul of this compound still looms. “I wish I had more time, I don’t know where I’m going to move,” says Nalini. After a thoughtful silence, she adds, “Hey, tell me a joke.”