In a city with new coffee shops popping up every week, it is almost ironic that Karachi’s bookstores are being lost to development.

At some point in time, it was a norm for one to walk into a tea house or a café, with a book pressed under one’s arm. After Partition, there were around 30 bookstores in the Saddar area alone. Elphinstone Street (now Zaibunnisa Street) is recalled to have been lined with bookstores. This included Thomas & Thomas Booksellers near Regal Chowk and Pioneer Book House on Bunder Road (now MA Jinnah Road).

I recently got the news that Pioneer Book House had to vacate its longtime premises, forcing it to relocate to a smaller premises in the vicinity of the city court in the city’s downtown area. This news was deeply saddening and leaves a big question mark over where we are headed as a city, if we cannot sustain bookstores.

A REFUGE FOR BOOK LOVERS

Pioneer Book House was established in 1945 by Inayat Hussain, who migrated to Karachi from Bombay. Already having been involved in the business of pens and stationery, he established Pioneer Book House in the then Avon Lodge (now Sami Chambers). The bookstore was the first official distributor of Faber-Castell stationery. Later, it became primarily a bookstore dealing with law books.

Once a thriving literary landmark, Pioneer Book House is another casualty in Karachi’s relentless drive for development. Can the city preserve its history before it’s too late?

Over the years, the building and the bookstore were witness to a lot of things. The upper floor — which later became a gallery and reading room — once housed a tailor’s workshop. There used to be another bookstore in the building that closed down.

Pioneer, too, was at the brink of closure nine years ago, until it was given a new life when, on discovering its historical significance and current state of affairs, writer Maniza Naqvi worked tirelessly and managed to not only keep the bookstore afloat but also create a magical little nook on the upper storey of the bookstore. It became known as the Oopervalee [upstairs] Gallery. This became a space for readings and gatherings of book lovers.

“It’s not bricks and mortar that are a thing of beauty if they are dead spaces or turned into meaningless monuments,” Naqvi tells Eos. “Beauty happens when people interact and exchange experiences and ideas and build positive relationships in these spaces. That is what I fostered,” Naqvi adds.

LOCKING STEP WITH MEMORIES

On the countless occasions I visited the bookstore, I would without fail walk up the stairs past the mezzanine floor to the Oopervalee Gallery. It always gave me a feeling of climbing up into an enchanted old attic, such as the ones I had read about in Enid Blyton books as a child.

In this magical little place, one could hear the distant echoes of all the readings that had taken place, including by the late Akhtar Baloch and his readings from his wonderful book on Karachi, Karaanchi Wala.

Another feature of the space was Akhtar Soomro’s photographs of Karachi, especially Lyari, the neighbourhood where he was born and lived most of his life. One very striking photograph from the exhibit features a young boy staring into the camera, with his hands covered in boxing mitts, raised and tense in front of him. This photograph was also featured on the poster commemorating the exhibition.

In a city that never slows down, once you entered the bookstore, the din and clamour of Bunder Road would become a distant murmur.

Now, after almost a decade, the building has been purchased by new developers. The long-established pagrri system, due to which the bookstore was anchored at Sami Chambers, is over. The pagrri system is a goodwill-based rent-control system that gives perpetual rights to the renter and their progeny. Just like in most old buildings, the system is over in this building too. The developers who now own the building don’t intend to keep the bookstore.

It feels like this is the fate of spaces that dare to slow down time in a city that never sleeps. It feels as though the very act of a slow, deliberate life has become a crime and the places that offer such solace are punished in the name of development.

NOT THE FINAL CHAPTER

This has led to Pioneer vacating its premises at Sami Chambers and relocating. Given the plight of booksellers in the city and the dwindling number of readers, the place might be turned into a coffee shop, a mobile repair shop, a storage godown or, worse still, bulldozed, with a new building of modern design constructed in its place. The possibility of the latter happening is less likely, considering it is a heritage-listed building, but one can never be sure.

For almost a decade, seeing the bookstore thrive did give hope week after week, month after month, but with a lingering fear: one could never be sure how long until, like many others, this piece of Karachi’s history would be lost to the claws of development. This has been a recurring instance, as our Irani restaurants, single-screen cinemas and bookstores keep disappearing.

I first discovered the bookstore after stumbling across Naqvi’s book A Guest in the House, which I picked up from a used bookseller out of sheer curiosity, after seeing a faded map of the city on its cover. That was back in the winter of 2022.

After reading the first few chapters, I went searching for the bookstore, full of curiosity and excitement. On reaching its front door, I was exhilarated. I got to see and experience many of the things that the author mentioned in the book, including a larger canvas map souvenir that I had seen on the cover of the book.

After that, it became a frequent destination and, on meeting the author — first at the Karachi Literature Festival and, later, at the bookstore, where we shared a cup of tea — I mentioned how I felt like a part of the story. The book was written and published under the banner of the bookstore, with the purpose of supporting its business. It was also only sold at Pioneer Book House. Now, as the bookstore struggles to stay afloat, it feels like the story has also come to an end.

Bunder road and its surroundings have witnessed countless histories and microhistories that have unfolded in its many colonial buildings. Many buildings before Pioneer have been lost to development and the leftover ones are at risk of erasure.

“Very little can be done unless the government itself actually ‘buys in’ to these heritage businesses and the spaces they have been located in by financially protecting them,” Naqvi further adds. Although disheartened, she is not entirely hopeless and believes this will be a new chapter in the story of Pioneer Book House.

The writer is a university student with interest in urban history, culture, and public spaces. He can be contacted at pakistaniumer04@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 17th, 2025