The inspiration

Guwahati, Jan. 9: Remember the Fox Books store in the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan film You’ve Got Mail? That super-speciality bookstore with reading rooms, a coffee corner and big discounts that put the rest of the shops in town out of business and became the backdrop of a heartwarming romance?

Well, next time you see the film, don’t sigh. Not for Fox Books store, at any rate.

A mega bookshop with a tea corner, a cyber zone, a gift corner, a cosy reading room and an events space may soon be a part of this city’s leisure destinations.

Inspired by the Oxford Bookstore in Calcutta, Imran Hussain, a young enterprising commerce graduate, has decided to give the business of buying books a whole new meaning.

It has only helped that Hussain’s family is into publishing and book-selling.

The idea of setting up a mega bookshop in Guwahati germinated during Hussain’s trips to Delhi and Calcutta.

“I am a frequent visitor to Calcutta and was impressed by the services available at Oxford Bookstore located in The Park Arcade of the city. The proposed bookstore of mine will have a touch of the Oxford Bookstore,” said Hussain, who runs two shops, Kitab Bhawan and Kitab Mahal in the city’s Panbazar area.

Internet and television have eaten into the book market, said Hussain, and the only way to boost sales was to take the idea of a bookshop out of the dull and dreary rooms.

He said the entire idea behind his new bookstore would be to sell books by entertaining booklovers.

In the tea corner, for instance, customers can leaf through books on display while sipping fragrant tea.

The cyber zone will give the buyers an opportunity to find more on the latest bestsellers.

“In the gift corner, we will offer a variety of items like pens, albums, globes, bookmarks. A good range of beautiful stationery, notebooks, wrapping paper, cards and flowers will also be available,” said Hussain.

For the uncertain souls, who reach a bookshop unsure of what to buy, there’s the reading room where one can browse before buying a book.

The events space will used to organise writers’ meets, discussions on new arrivals and exhibition of rare books. Book releases will be organised in this corner.

Hussain’s publication firm has the credit of translating Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Shobha De’s Spouse: The Truth About Marriage, Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines and The Glass Palace, Nadine Gordimer’s Telling Tales, John M. Vitek’s My Dear Young Friends and Eunice de Souza’s Folktales From India into Assamese.

He also has the exclusive rights to reprint, publish and sell Boris Ford’s The Guide to English Literature in the whole of Southeast Asia.