BENGALURU: "Blossom's has been an integral part of my book shelf". "Church Street isn’t complete without you". "Only place where the intoxication is due to the smell of a great book collection".
Bibliophiles can't stop sharing their thoughts on social media about their connection with Blossom Book House, which celebrated its 20th anniversary recently. It's business as usual at the store where founder Mayi Gowda is looking after book orders and ensuring they reach readers.
"We had planned to celebrate the occasion by organising a get together for authors and readers and wanted to give away free books. But we have postponed it to May, owing to the COVID-19 situation," says Gowda, who will also be celebrating his birthday in the same month.
For a person, who travelled to Bengaluru from Mysuru in 1995 to study engineering, the very thought of selling books never existed. However, one night in Uparpete, near Majestic, completely changed his life.
"I was looking for a hostel to stay in when I came to the city and found one near Majestic. Every night I observed vendors selling books on the platform. I used to assist them in selling the books for at least three months. I requested them to give me two bags of books to sell elsewhere," says Gowda, who later went on to sell books on the footpath in front of Higginbothams on MG Road in the early 2000 and in two years managed to open his first book store on Church Street.
He started with a mere collection of 1,500 books, predominantly English ones, and now stands at selling nearly 2,500 books every day.
Moreover, Gowda did not inform his parents in Mysuru about his new-found passion for selling books. "I did not inform my parents about the hardships I faced when I came to Bengaluru. I told them about my passion for selling books only in 2002. My parents disapproved of the idea because they wanted me to secure a software job. But when I think about it now, I feel that a software job wouldn’t have given me the same satisfaction as selling books does," says Gowda, who adds authors like Ramachandra Guha, Vivek Shanbagh, Anita Nair, Raghu Karnad frequent his book store.
According to Gowda, the first book he sold in Blossom's was How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie to one Jaishankar, who is his oldest customer. He also mentions that there was a serpentine queue at 1 am during the release of the book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling. The second to match the craze was only for Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol.
With COVIDd-19, Gowda is now using the delivery platforms to send across books ordered by customers. With a small footfall these days, Gowda has also amplified his website through which he is generating enough book orders.
"Walking down the streets of MG Road and Brigade Road always takes me back to my early days of selling books on the footpath. I am very elated that even after 20 years, people still consider Blossom's to be the cultural landmark of Bengaluru. In fact, the name Blossom actually signifies my growth from a platform to a big book store," says the 47-year-old.