Higginbothams Bookstore, Mount Road

Higginbothams & Co. is credited with being India’s first organised Bookstore. It was started in 1844 in Chennai by Abel Joshua Higginbotham and later moved to Mount Road. It is opposite the LIC building, Chennai's first 10 storeyed building. Before I go into the history and other aspects of the bookstore itself, I shall talk about Mount Road, to show why the location is as important, if not more, as the store.

Everybody who has been to Chennai, formerly known as Madras, is no stranger to Mount Road (Anna Salai). It runs from Parktown, near Central Station, in the north to Kathipara Junction, Guindy, in the south. St. Thomas Mount Road is about 400 years old, starting as a cart track for the employees of the British East India Company, who traveled from Fort St George to St Thomas Mount, where the apostle St Thomas was crucified. Old pictures show this stretch as a beautiful avenue lined with trees. It starts off as on a little island near Fort St George on the Cooum creek. Mount Road is, and has always been Chennai’s main thoroughfare, along which the city began growing. It was the single most important road in madras in pre independent India, with stately British and Indian buildings housing stores and offices like The Imperial Bank of India (State Bank of India, now), Bharat Insurance, Spencer’s (not the ghastly building we see today), newspapers like The Mail and The Hindu.

A stroll down Mount Road is valuable to anybody interested in Architecture, and Urbanisation, because of the sheer number of buildings in architectural styles ranging from Indo Islamic (Thousand Lights Mosque) to Victorian/Gothic (Higginbothams Book Store) and Indo Saracenic (Bharat Insurance), that take us down the path of the history and evolution of the city. A large number of these buildings have ornate windows, with Stained Glass, often imported from Europe. Today, these heritage buildings face threats of demolition, in the name of Urbanisation.

Rumour has it that the fire that broke out in the Spencer’s building (Indo Saracenic style of 1895) was pre planned, in order to build in its place, a ‘modern’ building. This is only one example of the way Chennai has lost so many of its exquisite heritage buildings. Heritage structures, apart from being evidences of history or places of commemoration, have validity as alternate spaces of habitation. They are instructive examples of sustainable building traditions and crafts. They are places worthy of preservation. It is an integral part of any inclusive city. Unfortunately, Chennai planners do not always seem so inclined to recognise and preserve the presence of their city’s multicultural past, going by the number of demolitions and acquisitions in the recent past.

The 1990s were a period of land rush, when real estate agents wrecked down several heritage buildings all over Chennai, particularly Mount Road, unmindful of the irrevocable destruction that was being caused to the city’s heritage and socio-cultural and economic past. Thankfully, Higginbothams was not victim to a similar fate, in the name of development and urbanisation.

Higginbothams is not only the first bookstore in India; it is also the largest, at 10,000 sq ft, if its adjacent books godown standing on a plinth of more than two acres is taken into consideration. Abel Joshua Higginbothams got the task of managing the Wesleyan Book Shop at Madras, in the mid 1800s when there was a large influx of Christian missionaries, particularly Protestant evangelists. The evangelists found the religious bookshop a losing venture, and Abel Joshua Higginbotham was able to afford the shop in a distress sale, and named it ‘Higginbothams’. Though it was started as a small shop with whatever stock was left behind by the missionaries, because of its strategic location on Mount Road (which was the centre of all activity in Madras) the bookshop was noticed and its reputation grew. An educated man, Abel Joshua got familiar with whatever the public was reading or wanted, and supplied to the city’s demand. After his death in 1891, Higginbothams was shifted to its present location on Mount Road, with his son CH Higginbotham in charge. Half a century later, in 1949, S. Anantharamakrishnan of the Amalgamations Group took over the bookstore from the Higginbothams. His son A. Krishnamoorthy is now its chairperson.

With its high ceiling, old beautiful interiors, mammoth staircase and classic bookshelves, and its stately Gothic architecture, Higginbothams is a treat for the eyes. The flooring, in chequered (black and white) Italian marble, is as old as the store. Exquisite stained glass was imported from Europe, to decorate the windows. One can see that the building design is in keeping with the requirements of a bookstore, to protect the stock – the high ceiling allows air to circulate better, reducing dampness and mustiness, the number of windows was kept to a minimum to prevent dust from the then unmetalled roads. Among other things, the majestic wooden staircase leading to the second floor lends warmth and calm, so important to a bookstore. An antique grandfather clock at the foot of the staircase reminds visitors of the times gone by. The large display windows on the facade of the store, are later additions to the store, growing with the times, but still very much 19^th century. They are protected, not by metal shutters like today’s bookstores, but by stately wooden doors. Although the store in centrally air-conditioned, it still uses old style high ceiling fans and lamps.

Henri Lefebvre writes that space is not only a concrete, material object, but also an ideological, lived one. Space is dynamic. It changes things, and undergoes changes itself, in relation to social structures and changing times. Space stays important, for this precise reason. Higginbothams has survived close to two centuries because of its ability to adapt, particularly to modern technology (the store is under CCTV surveillance), and grow with the times, adjusting itself to the demands of the market. While it started as a store selling only books, today it has branched off into selling stationery too, apart from its regular printing and publishing works. Over the years, it has also started stocking souvenirs that tourists can buy.

Higginbothams has contributed to the growth of Mount Road, as much as Mount Road has helped it become what it has. The social space that is Higginbothams has helped produce space around itself. Space is not just the context in which social relations occur, but also the medium through which this happens. All social relations remain abstract and unrealised until they are concretely expressed and materially and symbolically inscribed in lived space. Space is a social product; it is produced by social relations and constructions of structures, and vice versa. Bookstores are important because of their ability to influence social constructions and perceptions of things. For example, the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York city, established in 1967, was the first bookshop to stock queer literature, and works of gay and lesbian authors. It changed several biased perceptions, and played an important role in making the society more tolerant and appreciative of the ‘queer’. Similarly, the location of an intellectual and cultural centre, has brought art and diversity to the road, bringing in several bookstores, handloom and handicraft emporiums, and making this stretch of the road important from a tourism point of view. It has helped in the establishment of businesses that cater to needs of tourists, like Poompuhar, a Tamil Nadu government initiative for handicrafts.

Michel Foucault, in ‘Des espaces autres’ a lecture delivered to students of Architecture, introduces the concept of ‘Heterotopias’, spaces of ‘otherness’, that are simultaneously real and mystic. Bookstores are heterotopias too, because of their ability to construct and shape society. Their relationship to time is, typical of heterotopias – renegotiation. Bookstores are situated in the present, while they preserve and allow access to the past. The moment one enters Higginbothams, he/she is transported to the decades gone by.

Has Higginbothams been hit by the influx of large chains like Landmark, Odyssey, Crossword and Oxford Bookstore, which mushroomed in the 1990s? These retail chains are glamorous, invest large amounts on publicity, and allow readers not just to browse, but also settle in a corner with a book in hand. Some even have kiosks and cafes, so people do not go hungry in the many hours that they spend in these plush, furnished stores. They have not affected Higginbothams’ sales for two main reasons. Firstly, its location – as mentioned earlier, Mount Road is a tourist attraction, and most of the tourist attractions lie around Higginbothams, which is itself a tourist attraction. Secondly, it has probably the largest collection of academic and competitive exam books in Chennai, apart from stocking the regular genres that every bookstore does. Since many people from neighbouring towns and villages come to Chennai to prepare for competitive exams, Higginbothams serves as a one-stop shop for these customers.

The immediate space surrounding Higginbothams has become a sort of centre for all books-related activity in Mount Road. On one side of Higginbothams, is a building complex housing shops and offices of small scale book wholesalers, traders, printers, etc. On the other side is the Office of the Commissioner of Stationery and Printing, of the Tamil Nadu Government, and next to it, the Associated Press. Here is a wonderful example that illustrates how important a place Higginbothams occupies, in the history of printing in Chennai.
“Abutting Higginbotham's on the east is a little noticed driveway that leads to its godowns and its neighbour and present sister concern, Associated Printers, perhaps the oldest surviving printing press in the city apart from the Government Press and the down-sized CLS, or Diocesan, Press - the oldest in the country. Associated Printers' roots lie in the Madras Times printing facility, which after that paper was taken over in 1859 by Justinian Gantz, Booksellers, was printed at that firm's Popham Broadway address. The Times' press moved to the Mount Road site - of what is now Associated Printers - when the paper was taken over in 1910 by a new management, the Madras Times Printing and Publishing Co... Across the driveway from Higginbotham's is another establishment once long immersed in printing ink. In that era, it was part of the Government Press known as the Lawrence Asylum Press. Until the Asylum Press moved to the Egmore Redoubt, it issued from 1800 the famous Asylum Almanac from here. The Government Gazette was also printed here till the Government Press was firmly established. After the Asylum printing activities moved from here, the Government Press used it as a branch establishment - and for all I know still does. But it is better known today as a sales outlet for Government publications and an Indo-Saracenic frontage, which regularly keeps changing but within which Tamil Nadu Handicrafts' Poompuhar displays and sells its wares (S.Muthaiah, 13^th August 2003 edition, The Hindu)”.

I’d like to conclude with a quote by Italo Calvino, who, in his well recognised and appreciated book, Invisible Cities, captures the wonders and woes of cities, delightfully. In an enchanting fictitious conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, the former edges the emperor to look at how the past of a city is inscribed in its urbanscape.“The city… contains it [past] like the lines of hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls” says Marco Polo. What Calvino describes is not a mere fabulous account, but also presents the desire of the citizens to coexist with their past. Sadly, Chennai planners do not seem to want to recognise and preserve this past.