How Mahim’s Victoria Book Centre rents out books to make reading affordable
Updated On: 10 April, 2022 11:04 AM IST | Mumbai | Sarasvati T
`Shelf Life` is a weekly series that explores the reading culture in Mumbai. In part two, Mid-Day visits Mahim’s Victoria Book Centre, which has a legacy of over 70 years. As one of the few bookshops providing a library service in the city, the centre has managed to survive the pandemic and continues to attract reading enthusiasts
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Iqbal Merchant started working with his father at the book shop in 1985. Image credit: Manjeet Thakur
As the metro construction sign-boards partition the busy roads in western Mahim, one barely gets a glimpse of the Victoria Book Centre and Circulating Library, tucked in the right corner of a four-way intersection leading to Our Lady of Victories Church. What began as a closed-network circulating library drawing from Prof Suleiman Abdullah Merchant’s large collection of novels and comic books was expanded into a commercial library by Suleiman’s brother Noorali Merchant in 1948. Since then, this legacy book store has catered to the reading interests of generations in the city for over 70 years now.
By the 1990s, the library had grown into a full-fledged book centre and in 1995, it was partitioned between the two sons of Merchant. A major share of the centre, consisting of the library and book shop, is currently managed by Merchant’s elder son Iqbal Merchant, who grew up tagging along to the shop with his father and uncle in the 1970s and 1980s. “I joined the book shop in the 1990s after my graduation. That time the library was in full swing. People used to queue up outside and wait for their turn to enter the library. Times have changed now,” says 58-year-old Iqbal.
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