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On a Sunday morning, whether it’s sunny or rainy, hot or chilly, you can’t miss the book bazaar in Old Anarkali.
It stretches from right in front of the Pak Tea House to the far end of the service road facing the NCA Art Gallery and the Lahore Museum.
Some booksellers like to place their books on the service lane across the road. On my recent visit, I talked to some of them to confirm the name of the book bazaar. They unanimously gave me the same answer, “Itwaar Kitaab Bazaar” (or Sunday Book Bazaar).
I have visited this bazaar umpteen times. I can safely say that it’s a little book hub. Whenever I am free on a Sunday, I don’t think twice before heading out to the market and spending an entire day in the company of books.
Several booksellers start arranging their stalls soon after Fajr prayers. The bazaar’s popularity among Lahoris can be gauged from the fact that it has survived almost seven decades.
It is common knowledge that the Urdu Bazaar is closed on Sundays. This fact might have led many people to assume that the Itwar Kitaab Bazaar is set up by booksellers who have shops in the Urdu Bazaar. This isn’t true. The booksellers at Itwar Kitaab Bazaar come from various parts of Lahore; for some of them, it has been a routine for several decades.
I asked an elderly bookseller sitting beside his roadside stall, about the attitude of the readers of today compared to that of the readers of 30 years ago. He replied, “Back then [in the early 2000s], the people would come to us, browse through the books with admiring eyes and show us great respect.
The booksellers at Itwar Kitaab Bazaar come from different parts of Lahore; for some of them, it has been a routine for many decades.
“Most of them were big readers and regular buyers. Ah! Those were the times,” he got nostalgic.
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Very few booksellers know the true worth of the books they sell. Once I found a beautiful hardback of a novel on Lahore at a bookseller’s. I paid him the price he asked for. Later, I learnt that it wasn’t even a quarter of the book’s original price.
That said, some booksellers, mostly the younger lot, are well aware of the market prices of both the original and pirated versions, so they tag them smartly.
On one of my visits to the bazaar, I stopped by at the stall managed by a young man named Zubair Javed. He told me that he was a lecturer at a private college. He had a wide variety of classic fiction and history books, both in English and Urdu.
Javed admitted that he was a collector himself. “I visit bookstores across the city, looking for books to add to my collection,” he said. “Some buyers are so impressed by my collection that they ask for my contact number and later request me for the books they want.
“I sometimes go out of my way to get the requested books. I don’t want to let them down,” he added, as I checked out his collection. It was only at his stall that I found novels such as Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy and brand new copies of Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke.
Close to Maghrib time, when the muezzin calls the faithful to say their prayers, the booksellers start calling it a day. They do so only to return the next week and keep the tradition of a Sunday book market alive.
I think the government ought to do something for them in view of their role in spreading education and enlightenment.
Usama Malick is anMPhil in English