PROMENADE: The Analogue Bookstore

Written by Treya Sinha. Treya is a 23 year old who loves reading, talking and can’t help bouts of laughter at the most inappropriate times. She holds a lot of love for this bookstore.

I was in a grouchy mood after an argument with my partner and we were walking around Hauz Khas Village and he was pestering me to visit a bookstore. Despite how much I love snuggling up with a book, at that moment I had little interest- up until I saw a tiny box-like shop nestled in the corner of the raucous yet refined area Hauz Khas Village. The only recognisable title at that time, at least from a distance, was Charles Bukowski’s Pulp (with the dedication notoriously to bad writing) and unfortunately it is an apt one. Promenade Books is a quaint little chaotic bookstore beckoning everyone to come inside.The black shelves are lined up with books whose covers tease through the windows, and the store boasts of fairly unusual authors.

Probably Relevant Side note: Hauz Khas is a little neighbourhood in South Delhi, with a lot of history. It’s full of lovely cosy cafes but also, full of culture: with art galleries, record shops and bookstores.

The customers who come in seem to feel like it’s magic. “Sometimes they come and just don’t leave!”, says 22-year-old Abhay Panwar, the founder of the store. He smiles as he says this, looking mildly exasperated. Abhay is a man of few words, but when he (infrequently) gets to chatting, the sparks of emotion in his sentences as he talks about a book he has read makes a customer want to truly understand how he came about the concept of Promenade. Panwar oozes generosity and asks his customers questions that burn to the depth of the human condition- often sending them down spirals of thought.

He runs the store with Sarthak Sharma (24) a vivacious young man. Sporting ragamuffin hair and twinkly eyes, Sarthak is a USP of the shop on his own. He flits about the shop in bursts of enthusiasm whenever someone speaks of a book he loves and recommends wonderful unconventional reads  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 asking them about their hometowns, their families, any form of division religion may have unexpectedly caused in their life and truly doing his best to make customers happy. When a customer walks into the store looking for something dark, alongside recommending Satre, he doesn’t hesitate to suggest David Nicolls’ One Day to help them feel fluffy, hopeful and in the power of love. The boys don’t hesitate to go out of the way for every customer, whether it is by playing a song they may like, a chat about the strifes of life or suggesting a beloved book to take home. They aren’t shy of debauchery either, sometimes slyly offering them a rolled up cigarette on the side.

The Boys

Quite a few vinyls line the shop up- there’s the oldest album by The 1975 (A pop rock band, from England) and The Lumineers (an American band with songs that will punch you in the heart about addiction, love, running away, war and nostalgia) among others. The boys even lament a Title Fight record which they grudgingly sold to a customer for Rs. 7500. (As a rule, their records are not for sale, and lie there purely to be admired. Unfortunately though, love for literature doesn’t seep through everyone’s hearts and the money a record offers can seem dreamlike when you are only in the business of books). A massive volume containing all of Jim Morrisons’ work adorns the shop as do little works of art and love letters to the store that customers have given them since the store opened its doors to the public.

The famous Promenade vinyls

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 early March, 2024. “We’d been publishing books for a long time”, says Abhay, “but my girlfriend, Chisa, is the one who propelled me towards bookselling”. It’s a sweet tale. Chisa and Abhay painted the walls of the store together. Contrary to all the complex existentialism (Dostoevsky, Kundera, Bukowski, Camus and Kafka hog a decent amount of visibility) pervading the room, her own favourite stories are ghost stories. 

On an ordinary day, the store’s soundtrack oscillates between Longpigs, the Britpop band of the 90s and Fontaines D.C, the 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. People step inside the store, have long conversations of what it is like to live and create art and be an exhibitionist and leave. People also party- bottles of booze and loud music occasionally pervade the room, and outsiders sometimes mistake it for a private place. 

Abhay says that the concept behind the store was to bring back books that are out of print 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.  

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 solidified conviction. “This is bigger than Camus, Kafka, Dostoevsky. This book is a 10/10.”  

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 relationships he sees unfold before him through a tiny hole in his hotel room where he voyeuristically witnesses the lives of others. Reading it tickles uncomfortable truths that I didn’t want to face, but personally made me realise that all we do in the world, we do because we crave love and the desire to be understood. 

Sarthak’s opinion about the business of running a bookstore constantly see-saws. “I feel like we will become The Velvet Underground. We will fade into oblivion at the time when we are actually 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.

Probably Relevant Side note: The Velvet Underground were an American rock band founded in New York City who never managed to receive commercial success in their lifetime but are now regarded as one of the top influential bands by the Rolling Stone. They sang songs about sex, drugs, love and nihilism and their music was exceedingly alternative for its time.>

The store undeniably has 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.

Happy faces

Abhay seems to have fallen in love with reading as a baby. He appears to have read more than anyone (the writer of this article included) has known  — Rilke’s obscure poetry, all of Kundera, barely scratches the tip of the iceberg. He’s helped revive Willa Cather, Malcolm Lowry, Sinclair Lewis and Frederik Wolfe to name a few. 

The upcoming titles that the store intends to publish include Stendhal’s Love, and LM Montgomery’s The Story Girl. A gender gap in the authors published certainly exists and both Abhay and Sarthak are working on changing that in the future. 

The two boys are the soul of the store. Some would say that Abhay knows his books and Sarthak knows his audience and so 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. Their belief in literature and the worlds it possesses and can pass on to the reader  and their ability to tell stories about stories is what keeps customers coming. The store is merry and full of love and life.