KARACHI, June 14: It is heartbreaking for book lovers to know that slowly but surely quality bookstores have begun disappearing from the city. There was a time when Karachi used to have many a bookshop in virtually all important areas in the city. In the 1960s, (we’re told) tea and coffee houses had small libraries. Till the ‘70s, bookshops in Saddar used to have a fierce competition as to who would get hold of the latest Faiz Ahmed Faiz collection or a novel by Graham Green first. And then, the number of book readers began to dwindle as if reading them was a kind of anti-culture, immoral activity.

Barring a handful of stores (in the uppity malls owned by known publishing houses) the shops that Karachi bookworms once loved to visit have vanished into thin air. Urdu Bazaar is a big example in this regard. Though the famous Thomas & Thomas outlet in the Regal area is still in business (not with the same zest that was once its hallmark), one does not see a number of old books or low price shops where readers can get their hands on Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy or beautifully illustrated English translations of Omar Khayam’s quatrains by E. Fitzgerald. There is a reason for it: these old bookshops had stopped doing the kind of business they would till two decades back. The latest victim in this string of events is a shop in the Boating Basin zone of Clifton called New Mr Old Books. It is smack in the middle of a bustling eating-out market and has been there for 20 years. For those who opt for easy-on-the-pocket good reading material often go to this shop.

Unfortunately, this repository of knowledge will shut down within the next few weeks (by mid-July to be exact). Sad! True! Why?

The owner of New Mr Old Books, Abdullah Maqsood, sheds light on what has caused him to decide it’s time to call it quits: “There are multiple reasons. First of all, the number of readers has come down, so there’s less work for us. Then there is a huge issue of expenditure. We invest more and earn less, and spending includes the ever-increasing cost of the shop’s rent. My maternal uncle opened this business approximately 20 years back. At the time there were a great many readers. Add to this the issue of ‘book exchange’. We sell material at old rates but sometimes customers’ reaction is uncalled for which disheartens us. When we started exchanging books we thought we should buy them at half the price so that the number of readers could go up. It didn’t turn out well. At the end of the day, we are also here to make money and keep the fire burning in the kitchen.

“Some of the authors whose books sell the most are John Grisham, Nora Roberts and classics like Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy. In Urdu, Umaira Ahmed is widely read. People also love Maulana Rumi and Khalil Jibran,” says Mr Maqsood.

There is one name missing from that list, Ernest Hemmingway whose The Old Man and the Sea this writer bought from this store. And it was Hemmingway who once remarked, “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” This means, people in our society are fast losing their friends.