KARACHI: There was a time when Karachi had a decent number of bookstores. Then the number shrank. Some bright minds feel it’s because Pakistani society is increasingly becoming a de-intellectualised one. Even if one doesn’t go along with this notion, the fact is that these days there aren’t many bookshops in Karachi compared to, let’s say, up until the late 1980s or early 1990s. It does not augur well. The argument that the digital world is taking over does not hold water because in the West where the digital medium is more extensively used than in our region, the culture of reading newspapers and books, especially the publication of books, hasn’t dwindled.

But then, as Ernest Hemmingway writes in The Old Man and the Sea, ‘It’s silly not to hope.’ Recently, a few images on social media of a sizable quantity of books neatly stacked in a large enclosed space attracted attention of some inquisitive individuals. It turned out that the pictures were of a warehouse in Shershah. It looked like a haven for books. Well, it is.

The warehouse is run by a man named Mansoor Mohammad Siddique, who had a shop in the famous Khori Garden area once known for its formidable market from where students and general readers could buy a range of stationery, magazines and books at relatively cheaper prices. As things panned out and the reading habit declined — at least that’s the impression — those who sold those publications closed shop. Mansoor was one of them.

“Khori Garden was a decades-old market but today there’s a cosmetics’ bazaar there. Here [at Shershah] we deal in wholesale. Now retail customers can’t approach us or we can’t approach them because renting shops in the city is very expensive, requires hundreds of thousands rupees (laakhon rupey chahyein). The government should do something about it. We have so many books that there should be a book plaza here,” he tells Dawn.

The warehouse is also a rented piece of property. “We mostly deal in textbooks [for educational institutions]. The material comes from countries such as Australia, the UK and the US. There are all sorts of books — fiction, non-fiction, history books, books for children etc. We supply our material to schools, hold exhibitions there as Generation Book Collection. We also have a presence at the International Book Fair that takes place at Expo Centre every year. Sadly, there are no bookshops in the city anymore. The ones that you see [in posh localities or at malls] have pricey stuff.”

Replying to a question about how people can get to this treasure trove of reading, Mansoor said his team has developed a website so that customers can get in touch with them online.

Even a fleeting visit to the warehouse will reveal the wide variety of books that it contains. If you’re a literature buff, from Charles Dickens to modern-day giants J M Coetzee, there’s everything for everyone. And if one is into performing arts, one can also grab a copy of First Steps Towards an Acting Career by Nigel Rideout.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2023