Old Delhi's Parallel Book Bazaar

by Kanupriya Dhingra

This Element looks at Old Delhi's Daryaganj Sunday Book Market, popularly known as Daryaganj Sunday Patri Kitab Bazaar, as a parallel location for books and a site of resilience and possibilities. The first section studies the bazaar's spatiality - its location, relocation, and respatialisation. Three actors play a major role in creating and organising this the sellers, the buyers, and the civic authorities. The second section narrativizes the biographies of the booksellers of Daryaganj to offer a map of the hidden social and material networks that support the informal modes of bookselling. Amidst order and chaos, using their specialised knowledge, Daryaganj booksellers create distinctive mechanisms to serve the diverse reading public of Delhi. Using ethnography, oral interviews, and rhythmanalysis, this Element tells a story of urban aspirations, state-citizen relations, official and unofficial cultural economies, and imaginations of other viable worlds of being and believing.

Genres: India

102 pages, Paperback

Published November 28, 2024

Reviews

[Ambica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of insights and stories that are often left untold, Old Delhi's Parallel Book Bazar traces the logistical and spatial aspects of the busy and chaotic patri bazaar. A treat to read, leaves one with wonder at the people who build these spaces providing us with access to resources that we, as students and 'shauqeens', often take for granted.

The book in its narration creates an almost perfect balance of personal narratives and how these shape the structure and functioning of the patri kitab bazaar. It makes one acknowledge, and duly so, the effort that goes into sustaining such spaces in the ever-changing political and cultural landscape of the city.

Forced by circumstances or pushed by legacy, the sellers at the patri bazaar continue to put up a fight for their livelihoods, giving us a story of resilience.

"Qamar Saeed once told me ‘Hum khud aathvi tak hi parhe hue hain. Angrezi bolni nahin aati. Par humein itna experience hai ki kitab ki shakal saamne aate hi hum fauran samajh jaate hain ki yeh kitab kis publisher ki ya kis writer ki hai, aur iski kya value hai’ (‘I only studied till the eighth grade. I cannot speak in English. But I have enough experience that the moment I see a book, I can gauge who has published the book, who their author is, and the precise value of a book’)"

"The sellers’ knowledge corpora is neither entirely a result of free will nor determined by structures, but created by an interplay between the two over time."

"Asha Devi and Vinita are the only female vendors who ran independent bookstalls in the Patri Kitab Bazaar – both because their husbands had passed away and their sons could not stay at the stall regularly. Yet, both considered themselves merely ‘assisting’ with the bookselling business, and viewed the business as unsafe for women vis-à-vis procurement and sales in a visible male space."

[Abhineet Singh · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kanupriya Dhingra’s Old Delhi’s Parallel Book Bazaar is a dull, overhyped letdown. It’s a tiny book—barely 90 pages—that tries to make Delhi’s Daryaganj book market sound deep but ends up boring. The author throws around fancy words and half-baked theories about “resilience” and “space,” but it’s all talk, no soul. You get some vendor stories, sure, but they’re shallow and forgettable. It’s like reading a dry school report, not the lively chaos of the bazaar. Reddit’s silent on it, and X posts barely get a yawn—nobody cares. Save your money; the book’s free online anyway. Go visit the market yourself instead of wasting time on this snooze.

[Ushnav Shroff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very well-researched and thoroughly fascinating insight into the Daryaganj Book Market. Having read Ms Dhingra's earlier work on this topic in 'The Scroll', among other outlets, there really couldn't have been anyone better to write so vividly in depth on this topic.