Iconic bookshop in Hyderabad writes its bittersweet epilogue

“Hello Everyone. We are closing down. We are giving a 20 per cent discount on whatever stock we are left with. Please do visit us.”

This was a recent notice from AA Husain & Sons, one of the popular, iconic book shops in Hyderabad. And there goes another ‘rendezvous point,’ mused the typical Hyderabadi. A month ago it was the Garden Restaurant in Secunderabad, known for its Irani-chai, Japanese cakes, biryani and as a place for many a lively discussions.

For generations, AA Husain & Sons bookshop on the once A1 street of Hyderabad named Abids, was a favourite hangout, to buy the latest bestsellers. The bookstore fuelled the reading habits of many and enriched the literary tastes and English language skills of several over six decades.

And now, the last chapter of this bookstore’s biography is being written. “We will be winding up in a month’s time. There is no point when footfalls (customers) are dwindling rapidly and publishers are going online. It’s not making any business sense and we can’t sustain losses for long,” laments, Asif Husain Arastu, who has been managing the shop for the last 19 years.

“I am the third generation in the family running the show. My father and grandfather saw the best of times when the young and old flocked here to pick books of their favourite authors. With reading habits on the decline, the bookstore has been facing serious crisis. The trend of students “going for more entertainment and lesser reading ,” has hit us badly., Asif Husain told BusinessLine . The shop, which is part of a Trust will soon be brought down and a mall is expected to come up in its place.

It’s the all-too-common case of the onslaught of e-commerce and the difficulties of small stores to survive.

AA Husain had only one shop. It never expanded over 65 years. Starting with the business of selling foreign goods, within a few years, it turned into a pure book shop.

Ornithologist Aasheesh Pittie recalls, “I was fortunate to have been introduced to the books from AA Husain & Co, one of the few bookstores of repute as a schoolboy in the 1970’s. It belonged to my father’s close friend, Riyazat Husain Arastu, who ran it along with his son, Showkath. The shop was a wonderland for bibliophiles, but it had restricted display space.

“There were two large glass windows on either side of its entrance. All one could see was books. Once inside the store, there were black spines, which stocked Penguin Classics’ iconic paperbacks which always caught my eye,” he said. While Gangaram’s and Kadambi’s in Secunderabad attracted droves of bibliophiles (they have both shut shop now), AA Husain in the busy commercial street of Hyderabad, Abids Road held out one extra lure of being run by proprietors, who were knowledgeable. For most students and new book readers, they virtually helped lead them into the wonderful world of books.

Often youngsters would go watch a movie in the cinema to Abids streets. As Satyaprasad, an avid book reader and banker says, “After starting to read by borrowing books on a daily basis from circulating libraries, I graduated to buying the best of my authors from Husain’s — Arthur Hailey to Sidney Sheldon in fiction to Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre in serious writing. I remember cycling down from Nizam College during the mid 1970’s to browse and buy books. Then on Sunday mornings search around in the neighbourhood for fiction writers stuff in the Sunday book bazaars.

“Husain’s was for quality and latest books from the publishing world and Sunday bazaar for affordable, racy fiction of wide selection,” he says.