Daryaganj book bazaar: A reader's pilgrimage

Kanupriya Dhingra spent years researching the famed Sunday market of Delhi. The book based on her doctoral thesis throws light on the making of a reading culture

In Short

• The market once stretched from Delite Cinema to near Jama Masjid
• Readers prized surprise finds, low prices, chai breaks and shared rituals
• Dhingra researched vendors, readers, economics and community through year-long visits

There should be a word for the feeling that comes to book lovers when they spot a volume they had been looking for in a second-hand bookstall. Many cities have hubs of such stalls, on footpaths and shopping centre corners. Delhi once boasted great spots, in Nehru Place, near JNU and elsewhere. There is also a tradition of weekly markets of second-hand stuff: Ahmedabad has one, called the Gujari Bazaar, originally by the river and now near the riverbed. Kolkata has a street dedicated to books. But the biggest and best of them all is Daryaganj in Old Delhi.

I first visited in the mid-1990s, as a tourist. Planning a Delhi trip, a friend and I used to fix dates around a Sunday so that we could go to Daryaganj and buy Umberto Eco’s novels and the works of Latin American magical realism for cheap. The market was a series of stalls on the footpath running from Delite Cinema to almost the Jama Masjid – forming an L shape with Delhi Gate at the corner.

Jostling in a crowd for a view of the books on sale was not an experience meant for the type who bought their books in fashionable south Delhi stores. We battled the heat and the dust, but it was all worth it for the moment of serendipity, when we suddenly spotted the volume we had forgotten we had been looking for – it was as if the book shouted out at us. The bonus was finding a title we had *not* been looking for and discovering it became one of the more memorable readings of our lives. That we bought it for mere twenty-five or fifty rupees gave us added bragging rights. Rounding off the day, we would go to a particular stall for the authentic bread pakoda and a cup of chai.

Old books finding new homes, readers finding old books at a pocket-friendly price, and vendors making a living out of this noble exchange: what could be better than that? Going to Daryaganj with friends made lifetime memories. But we never thought this overwhelming experience could ever become the subject of a doctoral thesis. Kanupriya Dhingra did. From the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, no less.

When she first visited the Patri Kitaab Bazaar as a young girl from Alwar, she might not have known what it would become for her, but she must’ve developed the idea of researching it during her many visits later when she was studying English Literature in Delhi University. At SOAS, Francesca Orsini, a noted scholar of south Asian literature, asked her to “go explore” the market. The resulting thesis was submitted in 2021, and was later published as ‘Old Delhi’s Parallel Book Bazaar’ (Cambridge University Press). That, however, was an academic monograph, and she had much more to share – anecdotes, personal narratives and reflections – which led to this book, ‘The Sunday Book Bazaar: Daryaganj and the Making of a Reading Public in Delhi’ (Speaking Tiger).

No aspect of the topic is left out as Dhingra (who now teaches literature and cultural studies at BML Munjal University, Gurugram) explores the history and the economics of Daryaganj, the people and the processes that go into the making of it, the life stories of the vendors who keep it going, the community they have made and, last but not least, the readers who frequent it with a passion bordering on the religious. She went there every Sunday for a year, apart from many other Sundays, and forged friendships, gaining rich rewards to share with us.

The book is highly timely because it documents a Daryaganj that is disappearing. In 2019, the vendors were forced to shift to Mahila Haat, a large square on a raised platform between two sides of a road connecting Delhi Gate with Ramlila Maidan. The hustle and bustle of the footpath stalls is gone. Many better-off vendors have shifted to shops along the road to Jama Masjid and remain open daily.

The books sold are also changing. There are fewer and fewer booksellers who stock the kind of books that serve as catnip for ‘shaukeens’, and more and more of the books you can use. Academic books – textbooks, guides, books for competitive exams, were always there but now seem to have increased in numbers. Instead of Dickens and Proust, Dostoevsky and Austen, there is a preponderance of cheap pirated copies of whatever is trending in social media. These “D books”, in the parlance of Daryaganj (“duplicate and/or digital books”), carry copyright complications too.

It shows that not everything about Daryaganj is necessarily quaint for the book lover. After spending several hours, if you are tired and not in the right mood, you will wish to run away from what looks like a graveyard of books and instead go home and *read* books. In such a mood, you will see the piles and piles of books in a different light: so many books, books by thousands and books by kilos and no reader in sight for most of them. When you spot a pile of a much-talked-about recent novel remaindered by the publisher, you wonder if its famous author will pick up his or her pen again.

The reading culture in the capital, as also across India, is undergoing a major transformation. After the advent of Amazon, Flipkart and other online sellers, not to mention Project Gutenberg, nearly all books, in print as well as some out of print, can be procured at a click of a button. Some second-hand book sellers in many cities have left footpaths and are using social media creatively to connect with buyers. Then there are ‘shadow libraries’ on the internet which make it possible for you to have, say, the latest Haruki Murakami release even before the online seller can dispatch it to your home.

Dhingra chronicles many transformations the Daryaganj book market has undergone over the decades, but the one it is witnessing today is of a different magnitude. For ‘shaukeens’ (aficionados, in Daryaganj lingo) such as Sohail Hashmi, Mayank Austen Soofi and others interviewed in the book, Daryaganj will soon become a site of nostalgia. By recording the smells and sounds and the spirit of Daryaganj, Dhingra has given them something to savour in the years to come. With this book, at least I will always have my Daryaganj.

- Ends