Book Box | From beach meetings to Uzbekistan: How this Mumbai book club survived 20 years
Moving from paper posters at Prithvi to reading under Bukhara's Booksellers' Dome, being part of a book club turned these strangers into friends
Dear Reader,
My first book of this new year is a gem - warm-hearted and feel-good.
How to Read a Book by Monica Wood is about a book club of twelve women in a prison. Their weekly book discussions and their opinions on the characters and plots are dramatic and poignant. It’s moving to see how reading slowly thaws their defences, bringing them together in unlikely friendships. And oh, there are also quirky cats and intelligent parrots. There are lots of inspiring conversations too, like this one between the book club volunteer and one of the prisoners
“Books won't solve my problems, Harriet.'
'No, but they give your problems perspective. They allow your problems to breathe.”
This story takes me back to when we first started the Juhu Book Club. Looking back, it seems incredible that we’ve had twenty years of book clubbing. Back in March 2004, we put up paper posters at Prithvi Theatre and Crossword Juhu, followed by book listings in Timeout Mumbai magazine inviting book lovers to join our discussions. We moved with the technology through Yahoo Groups, Facebook Groups, WhatsApp Groups and Zoom.
Our book club evolved like a living being. Members married, had babies, and moved across continents. We had mini book meets in London, Toronto, and Singapore. But Mumbai? This suburb by the sea has always been the heart of the Juhu Book Club.
During the early months after the pandemic, the sea came to the rescue of the book club. We met outdoors, early mornings on the beach.
We celebrated Mumbai through its books – our Shantaram discussion was our splashiest moment, with Gregory David Roberts himself joining us in Juhu! We debated Mumbai-centric books like Maximum City, Family Matters, and Sacred Games. Beloved local authors like Kiran Nagarkar, Shubhangi Swarup, Amrita Mahale and Shubha Mudgal generously came by to talk about their reading and writing.
Over the years we travelled - to Matheran, to Kerala, to Dandeli where we spent two days in the house where author Manohar Malgaonkar wrote his books. And then in a grand gesture to mark our journey, in October. We retraced the Silk Route on a twentieth-anniversary celebration trip to Uzbekistan, absorbing history and geography, marvelling at the sky-blue murals of poet Gafur Golem in the Tashkent metro, and daydreaming under Bukhara's booksellers' dome.
Now, on a recent Sunday, we go back to reminiscing about these times.
We spend the morning in a garden by the sea with Rahul Bhatia, drinking coffee and discussing his powerful book The Identity Project – a brilliant blend of reportage, right-wing movement history, and technology.
Afterwards, we chat about the book club. “We’ve had a person who refused to believe we met to discuss books, he believed the ‘book club’ was a cover for other questionable activities,” we tell Rahul and his wife Richa.
Both laugh. And Rahul says "Your club sounds like such fun! How do we join?"
Our entry ticket? A book recommendation.
"Have you read Stasiland? It's amazing," Rahul says. A book about a police state and surveillance, subjects so relevant to our times.
And then, book magic happens. The very next morning, a blue hardcover arrives by courier – Angela Merkel's memoir Freedom. Opening it, I begin to read about Merkel’s childhood in East Berlin – the exact setting of Stasiland. There’s a point in the book where Merkel even discusses being approached by Stasi agents to spy for them.
Such are the synchronicities that happen in a book club. We were just discussing Stasiland yesterday, and today another Stasi-related book lands in my hands!
I open my Kindle to another book club recommendation - Kairos, winner of the International Booker Prize 2024. It’s a powerful and provocative novella about a young girl in East Germany called Catharina and her relationship with an older married man Hans - the personal and the political entwining in bizarre ways.
This is what happens when readers come together; a richness of recommendations and epiphanies about books, as we experience authors from around the world, dead and alive, in the pages that we peruse, and even beyond. It is just as the French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac says
“Reading brings us unknown friends.”
What about you dear Reader? Are you part of a book club? What’s your favourite part- the books you would have never picked, the food and drink, the conversation or the bookish friends you have made? Do write in with your stories and recommendations. On a related note, here are books about bookstores that comfort and heal, creating and nourishing book communities.
Until next week, happy reading.
Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com
The views expressed are personal
Dear Reader,
My first book of this new year is a gem - warm-hearted and feel-good.
How to Read a Book by Monica Wood is about a book club of twelve women in a prison. Their weekly book discussions and their opinions on the characters and plots are dramatic and poignant. It’s moving to see how reading slowly thaws their defences, bringing them together in unlikely friendships. And oh, there are also quirky cats and intelligent parrots. There are lots of inspiring conversations too, like this one between the book club volunteer and one of the prisoners
“Books won't solve my problems, Harriet.'
'No, but they give your problems perspective. They allow your problems to breathe.”
This story takes me back to when we first started the Juhu Book Club. Looking back, it seems incredible that we’ve had twenty years of book clubbing. Back in March 2004, we put up paper posters at Prithvi Theatre and Crossword Juhu, followed by book listings in Timeout Mumbai magazine inviting book lovers to join our discussions. We moved with the technology through Yahoo Groups, Facebook Groups, WhatsApp Groups and Zoom.
Our book club evolved like a living being. Members married, had babies, and moved across continents. We had mini book meets in London, Toronto, and Singapore. But Mumbai? This suburb by the sea has always been the heart of the Juhu Book Club.
During the early months after the pandemic, the sea came to the rescue of the book club. We met outdoors, early mornings on the beach.
We celebrated Mumbai through its books – our Shantaram discussion was our splashiest moment, with Gregory David Roberts himself joining us in Juhu! We debated Mumbai-centric books like Maximum City, Family Matters, and Sacred Games. Beloved local authors like Kiran Nagarkar, Shubhangi Swarup, Amrita Mahale and Shubha Mudgal generously came by to talk about their reading and writing.
Over the years we travelled - to Matheran, to Kerala, to Dandeli where we spent two days in the house where author Manohar Malgaonkar wrote his books. And then in a grand gesture to mark our journey, in October. We retraced the Silk Route on a twentieth-anniversary celebration trip to Uzbekistan, absorbing history and geography, marvelling at the sky-blue murals of poet Gafur Golem in the Tashkent metro, and daydreaming under Bukhara's booksellers' dome.
Now, on a recent Sunday, we go back to reminiscing about these times.
We spend the morning in a garden by the sea with Rahul Bhatia, drinking coffee and discussing his powerful book The Identity Project – a brilliant blend of reportage, right-wing movement history, and technology.
Afterwards, we chat about the book club. “We’ve had a person who refused to believe we met to discuss books, he believed the ‘book club’ was a cover for other questionable activities,” we tell Rahul and his wife Richa.
Both laugh. And Rahul says "Your club sounds like such fun! How do we join?"
Our entry ticket? A book recommendation.
"Have you read Stasiland? It's amazing," Rahul says. A book about a police state and surveillance, subjects so relevant to our times.
And then, book magic happens. The very next morning, a blue hardcover arrives by courier – Angela Merkel's memoir Freedom. Opening it, I begin to read about Merkel’s childhood in East Berlin – the exact setting of Stasiland. There’s a point in the book where Merkel even discusses being approached by Stasi agents to spy for them.
Such are the synchronicities that happen in a book club. We were just discussing Stasiland yesterday, and today another Stasi-related book lands in my hands!
I open my Kindle to another book club recommendation - Kairos, winner of the International Booker Prize 2024. It’s a powerful and provocative novella about a young girl in East Germany called Catharina and her relationship with an older married man Hans - the personal and the political entwining in bizarre ways.
This is what happens when readers come together; a richness of recommendations and epiphanies about books, as we experience authors from around the world, dead and alive, in the pages that we peruse, and even beyond. It is just as the French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac says
“Reading brings us unknown friends.”
What about you dear Reader? Are you part of a book club? What’s your favourite part- the books you would have never picked, the food and drink, the conversation or the bookish friends you have made? Do write in with your stories and recommendations. On a related note, here are books about bookstores that comfort and heal, creating and nourishing book communities.
Until next week, happy reading.
Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com
The views expressed are personal
