IMAGINE a bookstore run like a mini Amazon.com, long before the latter was even thought of. The Other India Book Store (OIBS) used the mail-order approach, and very successfully, a decade before Jeff Bezos famously began operations out of his garage in the US in 1994.
Sadly, in March this year, OIBS, iconic bookstore that it has been, downed its shutters for the last time — no longer able to cope with the fallout of the pandemic, as also the current pressure that bookselling, publishing and distribution face because of deep discounts and digital editions.
OIBS was. . .