"Just like its customers, a bookstore has its own personality and temperament ..."
Eureka! bookstore in New Delhi, the first specialist, independent, children's bookstore in India, was set up in April 2003 by Venkatesh Swamy and Swati Roy, two passionate book-lovers who felt that they should do something to get children and books together under one roof.
Eureka! believes in selecting and promoting good books for children. As an extension, Venky and Swati also co-founded and set up India's first children's literature festival Bookaroo that has travelled to 17 cities with 49 editions - they will celebrate their 50th festival in Shillong later this month. Here Venky writes about their experiences.
If one were asked to define a brick-and-mortar independent bookstore’s day in one word, that word would be unpredictable. But it is the unpredictability that is exciting in a world that is increasingly click-and-go. Our world’s adage is festina lente, a slowness that is at once charming and frustrating.
Twenty two years ago, when Swati and I set up Eureka!, the concept of a neighbourhood bookstore was unheard of in Delhi. Even rarer was one that sold only children’s books. As we muddled through, we read more books than we sold (later, we would sell more books than we read before the cycle started all over again), made friends, started in-store events and book clubs and also managed to launch Bookaroo, India’s first children’s literature festival (incidentally, it won the Festival of the Year prize at the London Book Fair’s International Excellence Awards in 2017).
It has been eventful and memorable. From relocating three times, to watching the rise of online selling, to closing down during Covid then opening up again, to influencers, we have seen it all. We have witnessed change - in readers’ tastes in books as well as an explosion of genres, authors, illustrators and design. A children’s book market that was dependent on imported books now has compelling writing in Indian languages and in English by Indian authors, Indian publishers exploring unexplored genres and stunning picture books. The shelves are full of interesting books. What is more interesting, however, is what happens inside the bookstore.
Sometimes, nothing happens. The doors open at 11 am and often the only people in the store are the staff till about 2pm, when you spot a customer - approaching very slowly – either alone or with a child. Instinctively, you want to drag her in by the arm but you don’t. The in-house joke is to observe a minute’s silence as the doors open and they walk in.
Then there are moments when the store is packed and you wonder why the customers cannot space out their visits. For many of our visitors, being at Eureka! is not just about buying a book and rushing away. We chat, we exchange news, we receive gifts, share heartbreaks and fears, discover common friends from the past and answer questions ranging from the future of reading, to 'how to get my child interested in books’, to why we don’t have an in-store coffee counter.
There is one question that makes us nervous and excited. Young man or young lady marches in confidently and asks: 'Remember me?' Both of us know that they are from our past and have come back to visit the store after all those years. The saving grace is that Swati hardly ever forgets faces and names. So we sail through it and the walk down memory lane gives us a high that lasts for days. Another one that makes us smile wryly to ourselves is: 'You are still working here?' And there is the usual question that starts with, “You know, on Amazon …”
Being a children’s bookstore does not mean we haven’t thought about the parents who bring them in. The store has a couple of shelves dedicated just for them while their children browse away. The children are lovely as they haven’t developed ‘traits’ - yet. But the grown-ups are different.
There is the delightful customer and the irascible customer, there is the chatty customer and the Instagram-driven one, there is the ‘secret scanner’ (scans ISBNs to compare prices on online portals), the active discount-seeker and the customer who believes that he ought to endorse the store – and does it. Then there is the overachiever parent who wants their child to read a couple of levels ‘higher’ than his age.
A recent phenomenon that has us worried is the way children are being egged on to become published writers far too soon. It is not that they lack the talent, but we strongly believe that childhood should be a time for reading, not looking for publishers.
Just like its customers, a bookstore has its own personality and temperament. Eureka’s tends towards agreeable-ness while its temperament is more on the phlegmatic side. It may all sound unbusinesslike, but as bookstore people we wouldn’t want to do anything else. Business can continue to be unpredictable but, like the cobbler, we will stick to our last.
Swati Roy has been awarded the 2025 Snehlata Prize for Promoting a Lifelong Love for Reading in Children
Photographs: a visiting customer reads to her child; Petr Horacek, visiting writer and illustrator; storyteller Vatsala Zutshi; dog Nanu who visits every day; Venky and Swati
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