A little bookstore with a bit of magic

Promenade Books is a quaint, chaotic little bookstore located in the corner of the raucous and cultured Hauz Khas Village in Delhi. The store is… unusual to say the least. The black shelves are lined with books whose covers tease through the windows at every passerby, inviting them into the tiny space. They boast fairly unusual authors.

The customers who come in feel like it’s magic. “Sometimes they come and just don’t leave,” says Abhay Panwar (22), the founder of the store. He smiles as he says this, looking mildly exasperated. Panwar runs the store with Sarthak Sharma (24). 

Sporting ragamuffin hair and twinkly eyes, Sarthak is a USP of the shop by and of himself. He flits about the shop in bursts of enthusiasm whenever someone speaks of a book that loves and recommends wonderful unconventional books to anyone who visits. His authenticity is shocking, almost unexpected in today’s world — he seems to be capable of cracking open every single human in conversation. 

Both the boys at the store are extremely generous, extremely good at making conversation and go out of the way to help every customer in every particular way possible, sometimes slyly offering them a rolled-up cigarette or playing music that they adore.

Quite a few vinyl line up the shop — there’s the oldest album by The 1975, The Lumineers, Suck It and See by Arctic Monkeys and the boys lament of a Title Fight record which they grudgingly sold to a customer for Rs 7,500 (as a rule, their records are not for sale). A massive book containing all of Jim Morrisons’ work adorns the shop and little works of art or love letters to the store that their customers have given to them are on display too. 

There is barely a bookstore in town that has more character. It is like stepping into a land where time stands still. 

The store opened in early March 2024. “We’d been publishing books for a long time,” says Panwar, “but my girlfriend, Chisa, is the one who propelled me towards bookselling.” 

It’s a sweet tale. Chisa and Panwar painted the walls of the store together. Contrary to all the complex existentialism pervading the room (Dostoevsky, Kundera, Bukowski, Camus and Kafka hog a decent amount of visibility), her own favourite stories are ghost stories. 

On an ordinary day, the store’s soundtrack oscillates between Longpigs, a Britpop band of the 90s and Fontaines DC, an Irish post-punk band, but occasionally we see them play their treasured records on a grubby vinyl player connected to enviable-looking Marshall speakers. 

The bookshop also hosts ‘Polaroid Days’ where they offer to click a picture and hand one out on the purchase of any one book. The store sets whoever steps into it back in time, making them believe in the tangible beauty of art. 

Promenade is almost reminiscent of an underground cult. Abhay says that the concept behind the store was to bring back books that are no longer being printed or exceedingly rare finds. They define themselves first as a publishing house and then as a bookstore — to give books the space where they can be talked about.  

“We’d been publishing books for a long time,” says Panwar, “but my girlfriend, Chisa, is the one who propelled me towards bookselling.” 

One of their signature books is Henri Barbusse’s Inferno. “If you don’t like it, you can return it to us and we’ll give you your money back,” says Sarthak with an air of conviction. The book indeed turns out to be brilliant — a creepy but tender story of a man in Paris observing all of life’s nuances from the the relationships he sees unfold before him through a tiny hole in his hotel room where he voyeuristically witnesses the lives of others. 

Sarthak’s opinion about the business of running a bookstore constantly seesaws. “I feel like we will become The Velvet Underground. We will fade into oblivion at the time when we are trying our best.” On good days though, he is infectiously optimistic, ingraining everyone with love and stating that will be enough to drive the store forward.

The store thrives on a sense of community. The customers often keep returning, and even when they don’t purchase a book they love chatting to the owners. They’ve hosted karaoke nights with people belting out everything from Coldplay to Nirvana. 

Panwar fell in love with reading as a child. It is difficult to comprehend the depths to which he has read — Rilke’s poetry, and all of Kundera’s bibliography, which barely scratches the tip of the iceberg. He’s helped revive the works of Willa Cather, Malcolm Lowry, Sinclair Lewis and Frederik Wolfe through his publishing, to name a few. 

The upcoming titles that the store intends to publish include Stendhal’s Love, and LM Montgomery’s The Story Girl.

The two boys are the soul of the store. Some would say that Abhay knows his books and Sarthak knows his audience. Both of them complement each other perfectly. 

Closer to the truth though is that they’re both full of love for the books they hold. They often let their personal biases come in the way during their process of curation, but the store doesn’t possess a single book that isn’t already loved. 

One of the books published by Promenade Books

In brief with Sarthak Sharma, community manager, Promenade Books 
How many books do you have?
Much less than I have paid for. Only a few hundred. Almost everybody I know has more books than me. I always give my books away. Sometimes I sell my own books, mostly I gift or lend them away. People say they get attached to books, I don't. I like to give away my books to my loved ones. That way they get to have a part of me. There's nothing more intimate than somebody walking over my marked passage, or seeing a damp spot over a page where my tear fell. It's more fun this way. Sharing is better than owning — in terms of books at least.

Which types of books do you love? For instance: hardbound / paperback/coffee table (and why)?
Paperbacks, I am not attached to covers much, only to plots. I love Everyman's Hardcovers because they age so beautifully. I like how we at Promenade have flapped paperbacks, that gives our books way more life and no bending/tearing of the cover. And absolutely art books by Tara. They're so creative in how they make a book. The team truly puts their heart into making those books.

What's been your proudest achievement in the past few years (for example, an author you admired visited your bookstore)?
Readers with sparkling eyes talking about books we gave them with outrageous passion. They're in a trance of a good book. They thank us and ask for more. It happens every once in a while and it is absolutely beautiful. I only exist in this business for the sparkling eyes of these few.

Where do you see the printed book in five years’ time?
Printed Books are going to get more and more interesting. Look at all the new editions in the market. Books are becoming interactive. Covers are changing, even writing is. In five years the printed book is going to become more impressive than ever before with more beautiful covers than we can imagine.

One message for the publishing industry? 
The book is nothing without the reader. Roland Barthes killed the author long ago in his seminal essay and he claimed that there's only one god of a book. The reader is that god. Think only one thing. Will the reader be satisfied? Will they love it? Will the pages of the book get marked, get damp with tears? When they finish the book, will they sigh? When they talk about it will their eyes sparkle?