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 Somerset
Maugham, Earl
Stanley Gardner, Edgar Wallace, in Literature….P G Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle,
Agatha Christie in Fiction…..he reels out. Alwar is not your eminent English
professor nor is he a lost-to-the-world scholar. He’s just giving you a sample of the
books he stocks – piled partly under a bus shelter and spilling onto the pavement in
Luz corner.
Simply known as Alwar kadai, the
shop has become an integral part of Mylapore and its history, like the Kapaleeswarar koil.
An important icon of the area, rather a landmark - like the Luz Church, Kamadhenu theatre,
The Mylapore Club and the busy Tank market.
A veritable library, there are as many as
10,000 tomes. Weighty encyclopedias, dictionaries and the Bible cheek by jowl with Mills
& Boon,  Yellow pages and
Filmfare, Tamilnadu Sales Tax rubbing shoulders with Asia
Pacific Satellite magazine and `Babies Names’.
Of coure, the indispensable guides which
helped us get through exams (especially the ordeal of the 10th and +2) to books
on Engineering, Medicine and Management, Economics, Law, Civil Services (sets),
Statistics, Politics to Literature and pulp Fiction – he has them all.
And not just English and Tamil ones, he has
supplied works in Sanskrit, French, German, Hindi and Chinese.
Alwar, 70, ironically is a school dropout
after his 7th class. He can hardly read a line from any of his worthy companions though he has been
living among them since he was 20. But over the years, his knowledge of titles,
subjecs,
authors and editions has increased formidably, though he never peers into the pages.
Still, he is an authority of sorts. It is as if he was destined to sell books.
On the other hand, his
wife Mary (it was love |
marriage and inter-religion, hats off!)
can manage a smattering of English, enough to
assist the foreigners who come in search of them, looking for rare historical works on
India and the world. Nor has the Goddess of Knowledge blessed their four daughters. Except
for one who is married and the other who is off in boarding school, the others are at home
– indifferent to the invaluable wealth around them.
 If you have anything to do with books, you
cannot do without a visit to him. Not just you and me – he has
supplied books to the high and mighty – the Mysore Maharaja, Chamaraja
Wodeyar, when
he was Governor of Madras, former Chief Ministers of Tamilnadu, C N Annadurai and O P
Ramaswamy Reddiar, E V R - Periyar, V K Krishna Menon and the Professor of Maths Alladi
Krishnaswamy to present-day bureaucrats. And of course, the serious bookworms to the hoi
polloi in search of seconds and rare editions.
Come up with any title, any author, any
language even, you can be sure that Alwar will produce it – within a week’s
time, if its not readily available with him.
With the cost of books zipping right out of
ordinary people’s hands, it’s the students (all levels) who form a major chunk
of Alwar’s customers. Why not, they can buy their prescribed texts for one-fourth
their original cost. He has become an indispensable source of rare books and
`out-of-print’ editions – for people like the brothers from Bangalore who came
searching for books more than 100 years old.
He searched high and low and finally got them 80-year-olds, printed in Russia!
Living and selling books on the roadside
invites its share of woes – both from the elements and the establishment. Battling
the fury of rains and hunger of termites is one kind, pacifying the city officials (they
hauled his lot quite a few times) is another. The antisocial elements and vandals
indulging in mindless loot is yet another problem. His applications for a bank loan (to
build some kind of safe shelter) have been turned down, though they are sympathetic to his
cause. But Alwar has managed to survive and service the cause of education since 1952. And
hopefully will, in future…..
Padma Subiah
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