A stone's throw away from the now-shuttered Strand Book Stall, is a dugout for young readers, who want a dose of unadulterated romance and crime
Smoker's Corner, which opened in 1953, was mostly visited by bankers and lawyers, who made up a chunk of the office-going population in Fort. Pics/Ashish Rane
Though situated in one of the busiest areas in South Mumbai, this bookstore, which sits on the fag end of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta Road in Fort, can easily miss the undiscerning eye. The decrepit board with the unlikely name Smoker's Corner, which appears to have missed a fresh coat of paint in years, and refuses to gleam under the harsh afternoon sun, is not something that would easily arrest the attention of passers-by. Neither is the array of pulp-fiction and children's titles displayed at its entrance, which incidentally, opens into the foyer of the near-century-old Botawala Chambers. To many, the store would seem like a sorry example of neglect. But, this is how fans of the 55-year-old bookstore remember the space, which is a stone's throw away from Strand Book Stall. Like its counterpart, which downed shutters last week, Smoker's too is looking in the face of an end.
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Baba Patil, who single-handedly runs the show at Smoker’s today
"The rest of Mumbai may be fast changing, but Smoker's Corner is still a striking remnant of yesteryear Bombay," says owner Zubair Botawala. Until a few decades ago, Smoker's would draw people in droves, especially bankers and lawyers, who made up a chunk of the office-going population in the neighbourhood. Also, contrary to popular assumption, Strand was hardly a rival. "They mostly kept classics and all the new titles, while we sold second-hand comics and popular-fiction," says Botawala. The fact that it was part of the city's collective reading imagination, despite not being a treasure trove of literary gems, was made possible because of an unassuming 28-year-old voracious reader called Suleman Botwala. This was back in the 1950s.
A reader's haven
In the early 1900s, the Botwalas, a family from the upscale Nepean Sea Road, had founded the HIMS Botawala Charities Trust, a public trust that ran a school for the underprivileged, and an orphanage, among others, in Surat. The family also owned buildings across South Mumbai, and Botawala's father Suleman, was expected to take over as trustee. "But, my dad had other plans. Though he wasn't well educated [Suleman stopped schooling after Std XII], he was an avid reader and wanted to start a bookstore of his own," he recalls. "My grandfather was aware of his obsession and in 1953, offered him the foyer space at Botawala Chambers."
And, that's how Smoker's Corner, which got its name from a nearby cigarette shop that gave the area a distinction of being a smoker's haven, came into being. While Suleman worked as trustee for his family-run business, he was a bookseller at heart, says his son, who now heads the trust. "Dad would show up at sharp 8 am on his scooter, and open the store himself," says Botawala. "Nobody could tell that he was the same man, who owned properties across Mumbai and Surat."
People in the area fondly called him Seth. The store's earliest patrons were staff from the nearby shipping companies and the Reserve Bank of India, a few buildings away from the ground plus-three storey Botawala Chambers. Smoker's Corner was mostly known for its lending library, where you could lend books for as minimal a fee as R1. "Most of the female employees at the RBI would commute from Pune daily, and they'd line up first thing in the morning outside the store to either return their books or pick up new ones, so that they could read while on their way home," he says, adding that Mills and Boons was a favourite.
Comics, international magazines and other, popular pulp-fiction titles also decorated the humble space. "My father never drove away those, who could not afford to buy books. That's how the staircase leading to the top floors of the bookstore came to be used as a makeshift reading room," he says.
Urban historian Deepak Rao, who has a personal collection of over 5,000 comic books — DC and Dell, in particular — remembers stumbling on this store in the 1970s. "I picked up a lot of Edgar Wallace crime novels from here, and comics, of course. But what I liked most was that it had the rarest of rare American and British magazines. You could pick up the National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and health magazines too. It was a humble and affordable bookstore."
The books, Botawala recalls, were mostly purchased from wholesalers and a raddiwalla friend from Nepean Sea Road. "My father also had contacts in the customs. Once they informed him about a container full of comics that was up for sale. He bought the container without knowing what books it held. I told him that it wasn't the best business decision," he remembers. "Later, we learnt that the cargo contained the entire Commando series. It was a hit with our readers."
Slowly fading
While Botawala says that the bookstore thrived in the mid '80s and early '90s and even boasted of celebrity patrons like Naseerudin Shah and wife Ratna Pathak-Shah, and the who's who of the banking industry, including RBI governors, its fortunes changed after the passing away of Suleman in 2008.
"To be honest, I know nothing about the book and publishing industry and my father never forced me to take over. He started this store to spread the love of reading, and worked here till he was 73. When he died of a sudden heart attack, it created a vacuum in my life, and it took me over two years to come to terms with it," says Botawala.
Though the initial plan was to shut down the space, he decided otherwise. "I didn't want all those years of goodwill to come to an abrupt halt. And so, I asked the staffer [Baba Patil], who worked for him, to continue his legacy till we could stretch it no further."
Today, the store continues to sell second-hand books, but largely caters to children's titles, like colouring and storytelling books. "We are going through a loss, and I have to spend out of my pocket to buy the books and pay the employee, who is single-handedly running the show. We might shut shop next year, but I am not disappointed. My father did his part in keeping the city's reading culture alive. I couldn't have done it as well as he did."
Also read - Mumbai: Losses force iconic Strand Book Stall to shut down after 65 years
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