The lure of secondhand books in Mumbai

© Prashant C. Trikannad

Secondhand books are a little like antique furniture. They have a musty but pleasing smell, can carry surprising monetary value, and are much sought after by discerning readers and serious collectors. But just as it is not easy to buy old furniture, it is not always simple to get hold of forgotten and out-of-print books. You have to cultivate relationships with used-booksellers, rather like a news reporter nurturing a source for a scoop or a cop working an informant for a tip on an elusive gangster. Once you have a contact or two in the trade, you can sometimes track down almost any title on your wish list.

I remember nearly every secondhand book or comic-book I have bought over the past three decades, and none of them came easily.

Some years ago, I visited a prominent new-bookstore in South Mumbai to pick up a 1995 edition of DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favourite Comic Book Heroes by Les Daniels, the well-known comic-book historian. The 256-page hardback, described as “The complete story of America’s favourite heroes and their talented and dedicated creators”, was on sale for the price of Rs.450 ($9 at the time). Naturally, I was elated. But I resisted the temptation to buy it. I thought the money could be put to better use and walked away. When it comes to books, however, even a devoted reader has to be practical sometimes.

It was just as well.

A couple of weeks later, I spotted a near-mint copy of the same volume at a pavement bookseller in the Fort-Fountain area, the central business district about 7 km from the bookstore. It was wedged between a tightly packed stack of academic journals and coffee-table books.

“It’s yours for Rs 150 (a little over $3),” said the bookseller, who knew his books better than I did.

I offered him Rs 100. We finally settled on Rs 125 ($2.5). It was a bargain I would have been a fool to turn down. Of course, it helped that the bookseller had been a “friend” for many years.

Not long after, I stumbled upon a fine—and, for me, rare—copy of The Penguin Book of Comics by Englishmen George Perry and Alan Aldridge, published in 1967. The 272-page volume chronicles the evolution of British and American comic books. While Perry wrote the text, Aldridge designed the cover and illustrations. The book examines the rise and fall of comics in the mid-20th century, in the wake of Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent and the Comics Code, as well as the influence of comic strips and comic books on popular culture and on entertainment such as art, films and television.

Until the mid-1990s, booksellers lined the footpaths in that part of South Mumbai. Today, fewer than a dozen remain, thanks largely to eviction drives by the municipal corporation. Interestingly, the civic officer in charge of one such operation left the booksellers alone even as he went after other hawkers in the area. 

“Books are Saraswati,” he told me at the time, referring to the Hindu goddess of learning and knowledge. “I want people to buy and read books." 

Since the turn of the century, many sellers have abandoned books—which few people seem to be reading, let alone buying—for more lucrative goods such as mobile-phone accessories. Book collectors like me have been the losers.

Secondhand books are not as elusive as one might think. You have to keep your eyes open and know where to look. Sometimes they are right under your nose; at other times, you have to sniff them out like a wolf tracking prey. After years of browsing, I can home in on a wanted title like a heat-seeking missile. All it takes is a quick sweep of stacks upon stacks of pavement books, provided the titles are displayed prominently. With practice, book-spotting can become an art.

Some of the most rewarding secondhand-book haunts in my city of approximately 18 million are raddiwalas. These hole-in-the-wall paper marts, scattered across the island city and its extended suburbs, are more than dusty repositories of old newspapers, plastic bottles and assorted junk. You never know what reading treasures you might find there. A few organised paper marts recognise the value of good books and pass them on to professional booksellers, but most stack them near the entrance and sell them cheaply. 

Like an archaeologist digging for bones, I have been prospecting raddiwalas for well over two decades, and with some success. I once bought a dozen rare Phantom and Mandrake comics, published under the Indrajal imprint, from a paper mart close to my home for Rs 10 each ($0.16)—almost as good as free.

The raddiwala clearly did not know their real value. Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd, publisher of The Times of India, had stopped printing Indrajal Comics in 1990. Since then, booksellers and individual collectors have quoted obscene figures for these comics, which, apart from Lee Falk’s Phantom and Mandrake, included Indian artist Abid Surti’s hero Bahadur (the Brave), Roy Crane’s Buz Sawyer, Allen Saunders’ Kerry Drake and Mike Nomad, Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Rip Kirby and Phil Corrigan, and Steve Dowling’s Garth.

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Among the other prized books I bought secondhand were Art Spiegelman’s Maus I and Maus II; the 160-page The Science Fiction Book: An Illustrated History by Franz Rottensteiner; a hardback illustrated edition of Futuredays: A Nineteenth-Century Vision of the Year 2000 by Isaac Asimov; Cows of Our Planet: A Far Side Collection by Gary Larson; Sudden paperbacks by British writer Oliver Strange; a hardback of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Calvin and Hobbes volumes; and dozens of DC and Marvel comics, including pocket-size war and western comic-books.

In the age of Amazon and e-books, the secondhand-book trade is slowly dying. Until it does—though I hope it never does—I will continue to look for elusive and priceless fiction and nonfiction. So far, I have been lucky enough to find a few gems every year. The secret to a productive secondhand-book hunt is patience, perseverance and, sometimes, luck—when a wanted title leaps out at you even when you are not looking. Those are the ones I like best.