Three more book cafes in Shimla

Bhanu P Lohumi

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Tribune News Service

Shimla, September 2

There’s a good news for those who love to read — three more book cafés are coming up in the state capital. These will be on the pattern of Book Café at Takka Bench on The Ridge.

Reading rooms in Sanjauli, Chhota Shimla and Tutikandi will be converted into book cafés.Municipal Commissioner Pankaj Rai, along with civic officials and prominent writers, today inspected all three sites.

“The cafés will be designed on the pattern of Book Café at Takka Bench and will also offer snacks and bakery products. The reading corner will be spacious,” said Rai, who started the concept by renovating toilets at Takka Bench at a cost of Rs 25 lakh in 2017.

Mayor Kusum Sardet said the move would inculcate reading habits in youngsters and will provide a peaceful environment to tourists.

“To promote literature and culture, opening of such cafés has been proposed in all wards and suggestions have been sought from the councillors,” she added. However, tenders for giving the Book Café on 10-year lease will be finalised on September 12, but the products prepared by jail inmates will be sold from the same place even after it is outsourced. The place has gained popularity within a short period of one year and is preferred by writers coming from outside. Writers and poets have a rendezvous at the cafe, with people from all walks of life, different outlook, caste, religion and age-group, who just have one thing in common - thrust for knowledge - meeting here over a cup of tea.

Writers pacified 

The move of the SMC to invite open tenders to lease the café had drawn flak from poets and writers, who demanded that “status quo” be maintained. They said the attempt to tinker with the present arrangement would be against the literature lovers and writers. However, with the SMC planning to open more book cafés, the writers have been pacified. Around five to six writers, led by eminent writer SR Harnot, visited the places and expressed satisfaction. “We will contribute books for the new café, besides requesting other writers to donate books through social networking sites as we did earlier,” Harnot added.

Eat, read, relax

Bakery items, including doughnuts, pastries, biscuits, cookies, twisty, puffs, breads, foot longs, burgers, cakes, buns, pizzas and chocolates, manufactured by jail inmates, are sold at the Book Café at Takka Bench at nominal prices. The café provides good ambience and environment to visitors to read and enjoy a grub. The café has a collection of over 1,200 books, 80 per cent of which have been donated by writers.