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February 16, 2009	Monday	Safar 20, 1430

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KARACHI, Feb 15: It was Jorge Luis Borges who said, “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” Here’s a different scenario: we’re turning a paradise-like valley, Swat, into a symbol of dereliction by, among other things, destroying the schools that once imparted education to the valley’s children.

Avoiding desultory arguments, there was a time when Karachi prided itself on having the most number of voracious readers and book-lovers in the country. There were innumerable bookshops at which hardbacks and paperbacks on virtually every subject under the sun were available. And yes, there existed quite a few markets from where one could buy second-hand books at prices that were as cheap as dirt – well, not always.

Not too long ago, an open market at the Frere Garden was a haven for book-readers. If you were into history, you wouldn’t waste much time on finding Toynbee’s A Study of History. If you were passionate about the communist manifesto, getting hold of copies of Das Kapital was no great shakes. If you were a student of literature, you could buy the reader’s guide to T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. And if you were an art connoisseur there were theses galore on cubism.

But alas, the volatile socio-political scenario compelled those who set up their stalls at the Frere Garden to close down their businesses either for good or move somewhere else.

Till the late 1990s, a certain Low Price Shop at Urdu Bazaar was a mine of quality second-hand books.

Its owner was a lean and lanky man by the name of Qasim, aka Kaka. He was an uneducated old chap, but had unbelievable information on/of men of letters. You just had to name the author, and he would rattle off the titles of his or her works as if he’d known them since birth, and hand over the book that you needed at a price that wouldn’t be heavy on the pocket.

But a few years ago he breathed his last, and Urdu Bazaar too is not the same marketplace as it used to be. Today the place is abuzz with buyers, but of a different kind.

“Students come here to get books on IT-related subjects or anything to do with MBA. Gone are the days when young people used to itch to lay their hands on a known piece of literature or philosophy,” says Khalid, who owns a stationary shop at Urdu Bazaar. “But the recent economic crunch has lessened the visits of even buyers of profession-oriented stuff,” he says. “However, the market for reprints is still doing a reasonable business as you can get a tome worth Rs1,200 for just Rs200.”

Taha Farid of Farid Book Store, which specialises in Urdu literature, says, “People think twice before buying a new book. If a book costs Rs700, most customers will invariably want a substantive discount. We often oblige, because we understand the ongoing economic crisis. Apart from that, reading habits have waned big time. Still, recently Wasi Shah’s collection of poems Merey Ho Ke Raho and Umera Ahmed’s novels have sold in a decent quantity.”

Pirated copies and reprints are sold like hot cakes. According to shop-owners, books printed in India used to cost Rs500 max not too long ago. But the minimum amount has now shot up to Rs900. Buyers shy away from buying expensive material and opt for the cheaper version for nearly 90 per cent less.

These days perhaps the most significant market from where second-hand books can be bought is the one that’s set up opposite Masjid Baitul Mukarrum in Gulshan-i-Iqbal. A place dotted with stalls with piles and piles of mouldy, musty and dusty but valuable books is frequented particularly by serious readers. However, in the last four months even their number has dwindled drastically.

“People have stopped reading,” says Waqas, who mans a pushcart brimming with paperbacks in the market. “You can get a Sydney Sheldon or a Stephanie Meyer novel for a mere Rs50 from us. But these days even that seems to be unaffordable for many. Yes, we do have our regular customers who come to us under any circumstances,” he says.

Mohammad Aslam, another vendor in the same vicinity, suggests something interesting. “These days the young readers go through an entire corpus on the Internet. They don’t have the time or the money to walk up to our stands and dirty their hands with old, dog-eared pages.”

It’s at Aslam’s pushcart that you can get a three-piece set of Tolstoy’s War and Peace for a paltry Rs250. It’s a 1922 print published by the Oxford University Press, London. If you move a few steps ahead you can find Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe for Rs30 and Parveen Shakir’s Khudkalami for Rs100. But they don’t appear to attract too many takers nowadays.

“It’s not that the situation is absolutely bleak. There are men and women who come to me and inquire about Bertrand Russell or Charles Dickens,” says Aslam.

Some bookworms also rave about Defence’s Sunday Bazaar where second-hand books are available at a price which is not as inexpensive as in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, but reasonable enough.

Muniza, an ardent student of history, art and politics says, “I get all my books from Sunday Bazaar. They have a wide range of reading material to choose from and at a price that’s light on the pocket.”

Notwithstanding the economic downturn, one will be in a state of denial if one doesn’t accept the fact that the habit of reading books is no more an inalienable part of our culture. Hence, mediocrity is spreading in society with carcinogenic effects.