Many decades ago, in the hill town of Nainital, a second-hand book dealer called Dana Mian walked the hills with a coolie carrying a steel trunk filled with books on his head. Decades later, in Central Delhi’s Mahila Haat, second-hand bookseller Dilshad Ali arrives every Sunday with several street trunks crammed with used books. He takes the books out of the trunks and lays them on plastic sheets, turning his allotted space into a makeshift bookstall, like the dozens around him. He has been a fixture of Delhi’s Sunday Book Bazar for 25 years. His stall is particularly popular with lit students because it stocks all the English authors taught in university classes. This sweltering Sunday noon in the iconic book market, he agrees to become a part of our Proust Questionnaire series, in which citizens are nudged to make “Parisian parlour confessions”, all to explore our distinct experiences.
The principal aspect of your personality.I’m not hi-fi. I don’t do hera-pheri. I’m from a village.
Your favourite occupation.Collecting books. And selling them here in the Book Bazar.
Your idea of happiness.Happiness has no paimana (measure). One doesn’t know where it might come from. But I do search for happiness. And I do experience it when I’m with yaar-dost (friends), or sharing khushi ke pal (moments of happiness) with fellow booksellers. Here in the Book Bazar, happiness means when Sunday ends with a good sale. But we booksellers don’t get mayoos (disappointed) during times of low sales. This is business. It goes up, it goes down.
What would be your greatest misfortune?There have been many. The death of my mother. The death of my saali (wife’s sister) two years ago. Now I have to look after the upbringing of her young daughter.
If not yourself, who would you be?I can’t take myself so importantly as to answer such a question. The world doesn’t depend on me. Kudrat (nature) doesn’t care for my existence in any form.
Your favourite drink.In the Sunday Book Bazaar, I always have lassi in the afternoon, after lunch.
What is your present state of mind?I’m thinking of the Odyssey book. It always sells well, maybe because it is assigned in Delhi University courses. But these days it is selling even more.
Your main fault.I do not encourage bargaining. A customer might see it as a fault. If I say this Middlemarch is for 200 rupees, then it stays 200.
Mayank Austen Soofi is a writer-snapper trying to capture Delhi by heart.
