How I discovered BBH

A few years ago I had a chance to read "The Bourne Identity" by Robert Ludlum. The critics review promised it to be a good read at the least and un-put-down-able at the most. That sparked my curiosity and I ended up, reading it over the next few days. Boy!! Were the critics right!! The story of an amnesiac Jason Bourne proved to be some story! As I discovered the true identity of Jason Bourne as a certain David Webb, an undercover CIA agent, brought in to bring down an international criminal Carlos, the plot turned all the more interesting and the novel ended. Now for the rest of the plot I had to read part 2 and 3 of the trilogy series, Bourne Supremacy & Ultimatum, which unfortunately I did not have at the time.
So I set off on my ritual shopping around Commercial Street, MG and Brigade road (I did that every semester vacation, spent in Bangalore). In my search, I finally ended up on Church Street, stopping at every street hawker's display of books in hope of finding those 2 novels. I finally struck gold when I discovered an old second/third hand copy of Bourne Ultimatum among those displayed. Now all I needed was the Supremacy, to complete the trilogy. But to my dismay I found out that even he did not have the book. It made no sense to read Ultimatum without the continuity of Supremacy, so giving it a try again I inquired if he knew of another seller where I might find a copy. To this he took a card out and handing it to me told me that further down the road was a certain book shop where I might find it. The card read “Blossom Book House”, and I thought to myself that it might turn out to be one of those expensive, pricy places.
Walking into the shop I was proved right, the books all stood in their hard bound covers and appeared way beyond my limited budget for the novel. The shopkeeper, looking at my perplexed expression inquired what I was looking for and directed me to the first floor where I would find it. Having been taught by mom and dad, that books are always a good investment I went to the first floor preparing myself for an expensive buy.
The sight that met my eyes, struck me dumb (Now that’s a difficult thing to happen since I almost always have something to say and very few things have the power to incapacitate my power of speech)!! But there I was, like I said “Dumbstruck, Awestruck, and all other of kinds of struck”! There were huge towering shelves filled with almost all kinds of books ever written (excuse the exaggeration, but you get the idea), neatly stacked into different sections in several rows. Never had I seen so many books and felt like reading all of them. Of course I had seen lots more in the college library when I happened to wander down there by mistake, but those books in the first place were the reason I avoided going to the library.
Between the racks/shelves were small plastic seats where one could sit and read for sometime before buying the book. There is no disturbance to those who sit and read through the books and are lost among the works of some of the best story tellers of old and recent times, the likes of which include Homer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Dan Brown, Robert Ludlum, Frederick Forsythe, Jeffery Archer, Leon Uris, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, etc and poets like Wordsworth, Milton etc. I stood spellbound in a place where many people start improving their vocabulary.
Looking through the books, I did find Supremacy, but more importantly I had discovered a place which would turn into one of my favorite haunts in the time to come.
There are places much better stocked than this book house but this place has a certain unique-quaint charm to it. Browsing through the books you might come across an old forgotten book printed ages ago, like I found “An essay on criticism” by Alexander Pope (If you have read, The Da Vinci code by Dan Brown, its this person he refers to when he talks about A Pope, a friend of Isaac Newton), printed in 1902 in London and bought by an Indian gentleman in 1904 (I know the year of purchase, as he happened to sign the book with the year). I bought the book purely for its history of around 108 years. Now that’s a really, really long time.
That was how I discovered Blossom book house. Irrelevant of whether one reads or not, this place is worthy of a visit, where you find the latest literature in peaceful co-existence with the historical ones and vice-versa.