Full Circle in Khan Market shuts its 20-year old legacy as it suffers collateral amid the coronavirus pandemic

Rent woes and no earnings from their Khan Market bookstore and cafe has forced Full Circle Bookstore and Cafe Turtle to shut shop, bringing down the curtains on a 20-year old legacy

Late on Sunday evening, as the city prepared to tuck into a good night’s sleep, Full Circle Book Store announced that it will be closing the shutters at its Khan Market outlet, bringing down the curtains on a 20-year old legacy. “It came down to the basic fact that we could not afford the rent. We tried to negotiate with our landlord, but he didn’t agree to any sort of relief at all,” says Priyanka Malhotra, director, Full Circle Bookstore. It was not an easy time, but their other landlords — in Greater Kailash and Nizamuddin outlets — were more accommodating. “Quite a few shops are leaving Khan Market. It comes down to the math, unfortunately. We were not earning anything for the past three months. The losses are in lakhs,” she says.

Full Circle Bookstore in Khan Market is now closing shop, leaving behind a 20-year old legacy. (PHOTO: Burhaan Kinu/HT)

The bookstore, with its winding staircase leading to the warmly-lit first floor full of shelves with enchanting titles, the corner landing opening to the iconic Café Turtle, was known as much for its turquoise and green interiors as for its old-world hospitality.

A steaming cup of coffee and a good read — Full Circle introduced the cafe culture in the city.

They now plan to open the bookstore in Meharchand Market with an additional bookshop dedicated solely to children’s books. Café Turtle will also make a comeback. “We will wait a month or two because we need to understand the (new) guidelines of operating a kitchen. Food is a different thing; it requires far more engagement and there is a lot of tactile involvement,” she says. The bookstore will open any time within the coming week. “We already have the team and the stock; it’s just a question of doing up the store our way. Until the café opens, we plan to have a coffee machine in the bookshop so that it remains alive in some way,” she elaborates.

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The journey, which began with her mother Poonam Malhotra in the year 1998, has come a full circle, with the daughter now at the helm of things as the bookstore undergoes a journey of its own. “We started in Santushti. I was in college and would be there during my summer holidays. It was another world. People would browse, review books — it was a slower kind of world,” she reminisces. When the move came, her parents, and a couple of friends, set up the café, painted the walls.

In the beginning, her mother would bake from home and this continued even at the Khan Market store. It was the early 2000s. Café culture was something people saw on American sitcoms or heard of from their NRI relatives. Commercial coffee chains were yet to mushroom. “You either had a five-star hotel to go for a cup of coffee, or a dhaba — it was that extreme. My mother thought how nice would it be to have a cup of coffee and read a book, but where does one do that here? That’s how it all came about,” she says.

The bookstore and the family grew in a symbiotic relationship. Each grew into the other, merging to create a space that went beyond the physical. “We have a gem of a team and they have been with us for ages. It’s really something special that’s been created,” she says.

For many, the tryst with a bookstore is nothing short of an experiential journey. A journey taken across worlds, under a cozy nook we claim our own. A bookstore, then, ceased to be a mere physical entity. It would become a keeper of secrets, stolen glances and lost loves. “Full circle evokes a sense of wholeness, a coming back to oneself. It’s where you want to come home to comfort,” she says.

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