Shriveled as a prune, the skinny man peers into a window display of Kitab Khana, his eyes squinting against the bright sunlight. Apparently satisfied with what he sees, he walks in through the arching gates, pausing only momentarily to pull on a faded green T-shirt over his stained wife beater, and disappears amongst a stack of books.

Love Letters

With its old world feel and wide open spaces, deep leather poufs and claw-footed armchairs, Fountain’s new bookstore seems like a natural home for such odd characters, both real and imagined. You should come here when you’re in the mood to browse and be surprised, when you’re feeling indulgent enough to not care that there seems to be very little method in the madness of these bookshelves that are lined with an imaginative if incomplete collection of English and Hindi books. Although the book selection leaves a lot to be desired, we did score hard-to-find copies of Collected Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story.

Chaos Theory

Ostensibly, there is one section devoted to Indian authors and another where works by international novelists are arranged in alphabetical order. Children’s fiction is assigned a separate corner, signaled by bright, insanely comfy beanbags, while spiritual, self-improvement and classic reads levitate on a mezzanine floor hemmed in by a pretty, wrought iron balcony.

But in truth, one of the first racks we encountered on the main floor displayed titles by Nora Roberts, Marjane Satrapi, Faulkner, Daniel Quinn, and Tolkien, as well as an anthology of humour writing from the New Yorker, Penguin Guide To Countries of the World and King James’ Bible. This Scouter’s partner in crime (we call her the kindergarten teacher at the bpb office) almost suffered a chaos-induced stroke.

Putting the Khana in Kitab

Fortunate therefore was the presence of Food For Thought, a serene little café at the back of the bookstore, painted in mossy green and winded through with a magenta spiral staircase. Here we ordered fizzy ginger lemonade and ice tea, jalapeño poppers and quesadillas, a fries-and-coleslaw sandwich and warm chocolate cake. Topping it all was impeccable service courtesy of a sprightly gentleman in a purple shirt and ponytail who owned the café and looked thrilled to bits by his new project.

The savories were as good as you can expect, best eaten with a side of inauthentic but delish salsa. We wish, however, that we’d gone with our server’s suggestion of vada pav grilled sandwich instead of the coleslaw bun, which had too much gravy and too little slaw. Chocolate cake tasted of childhood birthday parties. All that was missing was crunchy potato wafers and back presents.

Take Our Word

Restored, we picked out our loot of Toni Morrison and Ian McEwan and walked to the cashier, making a pit stop at the uber-convenient public computer to do a quick book search and display the bpb homepage (this is our primary marketing technique – we extol you to do the same the next time you’re at a Dell store, Chroma, or any other public computer). 

Our long, protracted wait at the check-out was fully made up for by a 20% discount on both our titles (apparently the store does this for all books), and gave us the opportunity to loaf around the place a bit more. On our last round we spotted more titles to return for, Robert Frost’s clichéd quote scrawled across a wall, and the skinny little man, sunk into a chair at the edge of the store, leafing leisurely through a picture book in his wife beater, his shirt slung over a nearby chair.

Getting there: Somaiya Bhavan, Flora Fountain, opposite the parking lot, 20% off MRP on all books.