Exam Central, Jhongas and Back To School Thoughts

An outing in Jamshedpur, India.

All photos belong to the author.

My dad just outside The Old and New Bookshops.

Last week, I visited the Jamshedpur Old and New Book Shops to buy some text books for my daughter.

Today, I was back to buy a novel: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It is such an old book that I felt sure that they would have it.

The bookshops have more inventory than customers. People sell their old books to them for a song, so they have plenty of books, but not every book can be resold.

These bookshops focus on exam-preparation texts. They don’t ordinarily have novels. Out of twenty-three shops, only one carries novels.

The GMAT, the GRE or the IITJEE — all the books are available, as are the coaching center notes.

Book bargains

All one needs to do is strike a bargain. Some people enjoy the process of bargaining. Personally, the only reason I question the price of anything I want to buy is — a book on negotiating I once read. In it, the author argued that if you pay whatever the seller asks without question, the seller might think he hasn’t kept the price high enough!