“Do you know Omni Books on Race Course?” asked my friend from Kodaikanal. I scratched my head, thought hard and then admitted defeat.

A little later, I typed the name into Google Maps and, when I zoomed in on the location, I saw the light: the hall a little after Vivanta by Taj Surya that always has a sale going on.

Two days later, I met my friend and her son there. While my friend grimly stuck to her job of buying books for her school, her son and I flitted around yelling, “did you see this one?” to each other. Among our finds were an illustrated hardback of James Herriot’s stories for just ₹70, whole shelves of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books (the leather-bound ones with gilt edging) for ₹50 and a bunch of Beatrix Potter books for ₹70 each.

Take your pick   | Photo Credit: M Periasamy

The staff looked slightly bemused at our excitement but very helpfully kept pulling out more books for us to scream about.

“We’ve been here for three years now,” smiled VG Rajan, the owner, when I met him later that week. “And the shop is open throughout the year.” Hailing from Chennai, Rajan has been in the books trade for 28 years. “I was one of the first door-to-door salesmen to sell books,” he recalled. Mostly encyclopaedias, the tomes were priced at ₹1000 and customers got an EMI option. “I got ₹7 per book as commission.”

A chance visit to the annual book fair in the city showed him that he was being had. “The same books were being sold for ₹ 400-500; less if you bargained. I realised that my employer was also getting them cheap and selling them marked up.” So Rajan and his brothers got into the business on their own.

A bewilderingly diverse range of fiction   | Photo Credit: M Periasamy

While his two brothers manage three libraries in Chennai, Rajan and his family moved to Coimbatore. “We ran a bookshop in Charing Cross, Ooty, and I would pass through the city to go there. I thought I would settle here when I retired. It just so happened that I did it even earlier,” he laughed. “Apart from the temperature, the people here are very respectful.”

As he took a minute off to make a bill, I peered curiously at the books another buyer was handing over. One computer book for the boy and two coffee-table DIY needlework books — all for ₹700.

While he’s busy, I roamed the aisles. One thing the store does not lack is variety. The children’s section ranges from Amar Chitra Katha through the usual moral tales to Disney stories, Enid Blytons, Harry Potter, Diary of a Wimpy Kid with occasional surprises like a bunch of Jamila Gavins.

For those who want to improve their minds or those of their kids, there are encyclopaedias on a variety of subjects, crosswords, the Tell Me Why/When/How/What types and more.

The fiction shelves hold a bewilderingly diverse lot. Amish, Chetan Bhagat, Ravi Subramaniam, Dan Brown, John Grisham and Lee Child rub shoulders with Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Emma Donoghue and Madeline Miller. There’s the mandatory Mills & Boon section that has a bunch of young girls giggling over the books.

Rajan was now free and I drifted back to the entrance to ask him about the economics of the store. “I buy cheap and I sell cheap,” he said simply. He imports in bulk from the UK, he explained. “I go over and buy books from the charity shops and then send them here in containers. When publishers want to clear their old stock, I pick up some of it. When I buy second hand-books, I check the condition and take only the good ones.”

When I mentioned Kindle and dwindling interest in books, Rajan scoffed. “People are interested,” he insisted, going on to talk about the walkers on Race Course who drop in to buy a book or two. “There are different kinds of readers in the city.”

As far as children are concerned, Rajan blamed the adults. “If they don’t see you reading, how will they pick up the habit?” he asked. “Start when the child is three or four and read to them for an hour everyday. Don’t put them in front of a computer or TV. They will automatically start reading.”