Courtesy of Jairaj Singh
A customer at the Fact & Fiction bookstore in New Delhi.

Our friends at the India Ink blog site offer a cross-generational look at the world of books in our part of the world:

In the summer of 1984, two years before I was born, my father, Ajit Vikram Singh opened a small corner bookshop, Fact & Fiction, in South Delhi’s Vasant Vihar area,      opposite a decrepit cinema hall that would screen films like ‘The Sex Life of Animals’ to a packed audience. Nearly 30 years later, it’s disheartening to see him disillusioned with the Indian book industry.

A descendant of a royal family, my father was brought up in old, decadent fashions and with a pet elephant in the house. He got a degree in science from Delhi’s St Stephen’s College, but veered toward the art of curating, collecting, and making a life selling carefully selected books.

I grew up in a world unlike his, one filled with books. When I was a baby, he would carry me in a tiny basket to the bookstore. One day, he found me crawling on the floor and sinking my teeth on books lying on the floor. “You literally grew up biting into the word,” he chuckled.

Read the rest of the post here.