Rather like the protagonist in James Hilton’s
Goodbye Mr. Chips, the legendary owner of Premier Book Shop was just Mr. Shanbhag. I didn’t know his first name for long. Then the Internet supplied the information: Sarvotham. It means ‘the finest’. Few names are so appropriate. And now he’s gone, taking with him a chunk of my growing years.
I was in school in the 1970s when I first walked into Premier. I had a gift coupon. Other bookstores in the area looked on schoolboys not as customers then or for the future, but pesky juveniles who needed to be followed around suspiciously and asked questions till they left the store in sheer annoyance.