From 1,500 to over 200,000 books, from 200 to over 3,500 square feet of space, from selling books on the pavement to becoming Bengaluru’s “treasure trove of used books”, Blossom Book House, or just Blossoms, has become synonymous with ‘bookstore’ in Bengaluru over the past 15 years.
Quiet, unassuming and always welcoming, Mayi Gowda, an engineering graduate who used to sell books on the pavement at M.G. Road, Bengaluru, founded Blossoms in 2002 with his private collection of 1500 books. Blossoms is now situated at a prime location on Church Street with over three floors and is expanding with a new branch to open soon.
When Gowda started out, customers would often come looking for out-of-print copies of books by authors like Edgar Wallace, Erle Stanley Gardner and Gerald Durrell and he would make painstaking efforts to source the books for them. The first thing that strikes you when you walk in now is the sheer volume and variety of books. Aisle after aisle, stack after stack, there is never enough space to manoeuvre around without bumping into a few books, dropping them and picking them up to exclaim in delight when you find that one book on your wish list of a million. I derive great delight every time I find an old favourite like a Raymond Chandler or a Leslie Charteris.
In an age when larger chains such as Crossword and Landmark are closing down bookstores across cities, Blossoms is thriving. The network of suppliers Gowda has built over the years coupled with his personal interest in attending to customers ensures that their loyalty remains. According to him 80-90% of his customers are regulars who have been coming for over 10 years. As someone who has been visiting Blossoms since 2006, I have never returned disappointed when I have set out to buy a certain book. And what never fails to amaze me is that Gowda often knows exactly where to direct me (or anyone else) to find a book or an author.
Blossoms’ core business till date is the sale second-hand books of all genres and rare books. The first edition of Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘Experiments with Truth’ and Pandit Nehru’s ‘Discovery of India’ were sold recently, but handwritten letters of Rabindranath Tagore remain in their vast collection. Their new branch will deal in school books, academic and technical books. With the advent of the e-commerce industry in book selling, it was expected that the sales would go down with people switching to online ordering, e-books, kindle and other digital versions. Over the past six months, however, Blossoms has witnessed an increase in sales. Gowda attributes this anomaly to the lower discounts being offered by Amazon and Flipkart in recent months. The other possibility I think, is that a number of books that are not available on Amazon or Flipkart are available at Blossoms, coupled with a delightful buying experience. Book sales also see a surge when there is a movie-adaptation released. For example, when the romantic drama film ‘Me Before You’, adapted from a novel of the same name was released, there was a rise in sales of romantic novels by the author, Jojo Moyes. Similarly, when the movie ‘Deadpool’ was released, graphic novels sold more before and after its release.
Gowda has been seeing an increase in reading among youngsters and children in Bengaluru, with more parents bringing their children along and encouraging them to buy books. He remembers one of his most memorable instances of recent times. “A small girl, about eight years old, walked in on her birthday, holding her mother’s hand. She looked at me and smiled. Then she thanked her mother and told her that coming to Blossoms and choosing her favourite books was the best birthday present she could have asked for. This filled me with so much joy and satisfaction.”
Blossoms for me, is thus, that one place which is ‘Of the book lovers, by a book lover and for the book lovers.’
(I conducted a telephonic interview with Mr. Mayi Gowda, Founder, Blossom Book House on August 23, 2016 and collected the following details for this assignment. I thank him for the time he spent, patiently answering all my questions and for agreeing to let me write on Blossoms. I also have to thank him for the pleasure I have had in visiting Blossoms for the last 10 years.)
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