Books or Beer?

Like there weren’t enough liquor bars in Hyderabad I saw that a new one has come up at a most unlikely place. It is a place that happens to hold some nice memories for me. I have seen Irani hotels turn into shoe stores, I have seen restaurants turn into readymade cloth stores and I have seen grocery stores make way for hair cutting saloons. But I’ve never seen a bookstore turn into a bar. Who would have thought that where once stood a bookstore, a bar would come up in its place? Not me. I for one did not expect that a bar would come up in place of a bookstore that I often visited in the past. But then, this is Hyderabad where one can expect anything to happen.

Sometime in the early nineties, when the only fashionable (read modern) bookstore was Walden at Begumpet, Gangarams of Bangalore decided to come to Hyderabad. Gangarams opened a branch (maybe its only branch outside Bangalore) in Secunderabad in the basement of a building complex right opposite Garden Restaurant at Clock Tower circle. It was an odd location for a bookstore, for sure, but the store flourished for more than a couple of years. A chance encounter with the owner of the store, Chaturbhuj Gangaram, in the first week of its opening turned into something of a friendship. Chaturbhuj Gangaram was a softspoken person with a terrific knowledge of the book selling business. He told me that he had decided to move to Hyderabad on account of his children’s health problems. When he learnt that I was a copywriter he asked me to do the copy for Gangarams. He was happy with the ads my agency did for him and I in turn was happy with the 20% discount he gave me on my purchases. He told me that the margin on books was 30% which was sort of an eye opener for me. It was in Gangarams that I bought my first Dave Barry title- ‘Dave Barry Goes to Japan.’

However, something went wrong somewhere and the store went into a decline. I had left advertising to join the government. I was posted to a far away and remote place which meant I could visit Hyderabad once in a while. One day I learnt that Chaturbhuj Gangaram had sold away the place and moved to Bangalore. For sometime the store ran under a different name, then closed down and opened again but it wasn’t the same. With competition from Odyssey, Crossword, and other stores this oddly located bookstore did not last long. Nobody seemed to mourn the closing down of the bookstore because in its place, something of great interest to Hyderabadis had come up- a bar and restaurant.

Last week while passing through the Clock Tower square I noticed a board that said ‘Madhushala Bar & Restaurant’ at the same place where once the board of Gangarams stood. From ‘Gangarams Bookstore’ to ‘Madhushala Bar & Restaurant’ hasn’t taken long. It perhaps is a pointer to what the average Hyderabadi likes- books or beer?