"Atta Galatta's secret sauce was that very quickly a community adopted us, and they've been so generous in giving back that it just keeps us going." | Ft. Subodh Sankar

In a city that cherishes nostalgia, Atta Galatta has wormed its way into the hearts of Bengaluru locals like no other. Read on to see how the city's patronage has helped this independent bookstore.

Subodh Sankar is the co-founder of Atta Galatta - an independent bookstore based in Indiranagar, Bengaluru. Since its launch in 2012, the bookstore has been a hub of activity in the city, more famously associated with Bangalore Literature Festival and the Under-25 Literature Festival as the official bookstore partner for these events. In this interview, Subodh shares how the bookstore has managed to stay alive despite competition with online retailers, and the unique spirit of the city that contributes to its vibrant event space throughout the year. Read an excerpt of his conversation with our copywriter below:

Winnie: Thanks for setting aside the time so early in the morning for this chat, Subodh. As an avid reader, and someone who too dreams of having a bookstore of her own one day - I want to know the story behind Atta Galatta. Tell me about the aha moment when you knew you wanted to set up a bookstore. Did you already know how you wanted things to function in the bookstore? Was it a thought experiment that just took off? 

Subodh: I don't believe in aha moments. Thoughts, dreams, and hard work sort of converge at some point in time, and things happen, so technically, there is no aha moment. Aha moments come and go. They don’t translate into anything. 

Atta Galatta happened because it was always a dream of my wife, Lakshmi, to own a bookstore, and the circumstances in our life in 2012 had come together for us to take the plunge.

Before we started Atta Galatta, we were hoping that it would succeed. No entrepreneur starts out planning for failure. I’d say AG was more than a thought experiment in that sense. But we were definitely thinking about how Atta Galatta was going to be in existence.

At the time, physical bookstores were shutting down across the country. Flipkart and Amazon were starting to ship books en masse, in volumes. Kindle was starting to make waves in India. The thought experiment was that we could no longer run a physical world bookstore if our business was just going to be about putting books on a shelf and hoping people would turn up. Up until that point in time, if you wanted a book, you had to go to a bookstore to get to the book. But in 2012, the ecosystem was set up for the book to come to you, whether in its physical or in its digital form.

We were thinking of how we could promote Atta Galatta as a platform for artistic and literary interactions. As a platform, our vision was different. Platforms allow artists and audiences to find each other, and they set the tone for your space - whether it's cinema, storytelling, workshops or any sort of artistic endeavour. As a platform, the space supported interactions around that artistic venture. The bet was that if there would be people stopping by for an event at Atta Galatta , there was a reasonable chance they were also interested in books.

We started off by encouraging people to come to the space - be it for the books, the coffee, the literary interactions or just for hanging out with a friend. Our aim was to bring people to the bookstore to just be; and if they were there, and surrounded by books, at some point in time, they’d buy the books. That was the thought experiment.

Winnie: Is that how you also started thinking of the bakery?

Subodh: We've always wanted nourishment to be available for people when they step into our space. When you do these things, having a cup of coffee or something to munch on always adds some sort of delight.

Winnie: Do you think that Bengaluru is a very unique city in the sense that a pitch for artistic and literary events, year round, could be made sustainably here? People are very forthcoming here, right? I was just comparing it to the places I’ve lived in before - and I find that Bengaluru really nurtures these sort of places.

Subodh: You know, the people here do patronise various forms of art and culture, civic responsibility and many other things. What I don't know is if there are other spaces that are like this city. I don't want to venture, I guess. AG has been a pretty big venture already, right? I don't want to diss some other city by saying that this won’t take off there. Who knows?

Winnie: Have you been raised in Bengaluru through and through?

Subodh: I lived abroad before I moved to Bangalore but then I was still a young boy. As a child, you don’t really experience the city - you’re living your own life, going to school, hanging out with your friends etc. I think it is only as adults that we start making independent opinions about our surroundings, neighbours, colleagues, the people we meet; the city itself. I’d say in that sense I don’t have adult opinions about any city that isn’t Bengaluru.

Winnie: Subodh, I wanted to ask you about something else that we’ve been seeing in the city: Nagasri Book House in Jayanagar shut down after 48 years of operation, this year. Premier Bookstore also closed down in 2009.

There has been a quiet decline in the number of bookstores across the city, but it is noticeable. In the era of the internet, it's not uncommon for brick and mortar shops to go out of business because the competition provided by online retailers is immense and intense. How would you say Atta Galatta has survived in the market?

Subodh: And it's not just Atta Galatta, right? I think no matter which business you're in, online businesses that operate in a similar space will provide stiff competition.

Restaurants haven't started shutting down because people are ordering in from cloud kitchens. They've done their bit to change the game; whatever they need to do to compete. Your neighbourhood grocery shops haven't shut down because of online grocery retailers. They've done their bit to find their niche and survive in this place.

In Bangalore, I think the bookstores have done really, really well. And I'm not just going to talk about Atta Galatta, I'm going to talk about other bookstores in Bangalore as well. Given that a Flipkart, which came to India and started selling books even before Amazon, is Bangalore based, you have to think of how these bookstores have survived one of the biggest online retailers of books sitting in Bangalore.

I still think Bangalore has probably one of the most vibrant and thriving bookstore cultures in the country. Look at Blossoms and Bookworm and Champaca and Atta Galatta. My observation is that we're all thriving in our own ways because we've decided to address this issue from various different perspectives.

As far as Atta Galatta goes, like I said, we are not just a bookstore. We are a platform for literary and artistic interactions, which means we do tonnes of events - between 10 and 15 events every weekend, which could be book readings, author interactions, poetry, theatre, film workshops - you name it. We became a platform. Here, we have a whole ecosystem of people who think of Atta Galatta as their partner, and they want to come and do things here. It has helped us bring various different cohorts of people interested in very diverse set of things, physically to this bookstore, right? By doing that, we've become more than a bookstore. We've become a community.

If you ask me what is Atta Galatta, I’ll condense it down to one word and say that we’re a community. It's a community of people in Bangalore, people that have visited Bangalore that are interested in various forms of art and literature and culture, and they've chosen Atta Galatta as a platform through which they discover and explore a set of events and things that the city offers. Even if the number of books that we sell reduce, the community is something that will keep the business alive. The best part about this is that communities find infinite ways in which they can support you.

Look at Atta Galatta; the space. It’s an abstract concept, yes, but this space is part of a larger community, and this community finds different ways in which to give back to us. That's one of the reasons why we've thrived, and we've been successful over the last 12 years, because the community is simply just giving back so generously. They come, they participate, they bring friends over. They help us. For us, the secret sauce was that very quickly a community adopted us, and they've been so generous that it just keeps us going. It’s not a transactional relationship.

Winnie: I agree. While you were speaking about the readers who’ve supported you, I was thinking of the reasons why people visit the bookstores they do - what draws people to a Champaca or an Atta Galatta or a Book Fair? I compiled a list for AG, tell me which one you think is true: Is it the bakery and bookstore combo that people really dig, is it a curated collection of books, the knowledge that you and your staff display of the titles, or the location? Is it the languages that are offered for people to explore? Is it just the fact that you can bump into one of your favourite authors while they're also checking out the same books as you? What would you say it is?

Subodh: I would like to say that this is such a wonderful list; and I'd like to think that it's probably a little bit of each of those things for different people, so I'd like to adopt all of them as reasons for why people come here. It’s like a Gadbad ice cream you know? You throw the whole mix inside, it’s delicious, and it just comes together magically.

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This interview is a part of BLR Echoes, UnboxingBLR’s monthly newsletter. Read our October newsletter at this link: https://open.substack.com/pub/unboxingblr/p/blr-echoes-this-is-atta-galattas?r=3fhnus&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web