It’s a Saturday evening and city-based IT professional Pravin Subramanian is visibly as excited as can be to host his first SwapBook club meet in person after two years. While he did host virtual sessions during the Covid-19 pandemic, Subramanian realised that online meets aren’t that much fun as offline. Now that masks are off, the founder of the book club along with his wife Bhakti Kulkarni, can be seen busy greeting familiar faces at Bombay Coffee House, the place of the meet. These attendees, like him, have been yearning to meet in person because of the sense of community they have experienced while exchanging books and that is visible in the conversations before the start of the meet. 

At this point before the meet, the café is not only bustling with diners but also book lovers, who have arrived for the SwapBook club meet – some of them are regulars and others, newcomers. Soon enough, people from walks of life including art, architecture, culture and travel business are huddled together under dim lights and a comfy couch and chairs on the upper floor of the cafe, situated a few blocks away from the famed Irani restaurant, Brittania & Co. Restaurant. They take out the books they are currently reading and place them on the table – seems like a ritual as they all do it in unison. All of them are from different fields but share common love for books.