From travel to community: How Mumbai-based SwapBook’s club is bringing readers together

It's a Saturday evening and city-based IT professional Pravin Subramanian is visibly as excited as can be to host his first SwapBook club meet in person after two years. While he did host virtual sessions during the Covid-19 pandemic, Subramanian realised that online meets aren't that much fun as offline. Now that masks are off, the founder of the book club along with his wife Bhakti Kulkarni, can be seen busy greeting familiar faces at Bombay Coffee House, the place of the meet. These attendees, like him, have been yearning to meet in person because of the sense of community they have experienced while exchanging books and that is visible in the conversations before the start of the meet.

At this point before the meet, the café is not only bustling with diners but also book lovers, who have arrived for the SwapBook club meet - some of them are regulars and others, newcomers. Soon enough, people from walks of life including art, architecture, culture and travel business are huddled together under dim lights and a comfy couch and chairs on the upper floor of the cafe, situated a few blocks away from the famed Irani restaurant, Brittania & Co. Restaurant. They take out the books they are currently reading and place them on the table - seems like a ritual as they all do it in unison. All of them are from different fields but share common love for books.

The table has been set and has books of all colours, genres and sizes. He says, "The books that get traded range widely from non-fiction to sci-fi. However, fiction rules the roost largely with most meets though we've had non-fiction become dominant sometimes." It is no surprise then when the conversation constantly shifts from discussing the latest in politics, music and even Mumbai's architecture at some point.

The numbers game
It's like a scene right out of 2018 Hollywood film The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, where they meet every Friday night, only this one Subramanian tells us usually happens once a month and even happened twice a month in the initial days. Interestingly, this group has 25 attendees with a limited attendance but Subramanian tells us that there have been as many as 50 participants in the past.

"It's fun and chaotic," he laughs adding, "Earlier, we didn't have a limit and neither a solid RSVP mechanism. Now with the event getting ticketed, we have an idea of who's coming and the cafés are happy to give us space." This means that while they had to rely on the cafe's interest earlier, they now have a commercial advantage to host the meet there. However, now he wants to limit the number of participants for people to have a wholesome experience. "From now on, we'll try and limit the café to one or two only and call a gathering for 20 people. It'll be divided across the city and suburbs."

Subramanian adds that while he has been hosting the book club for a long time, one thing that he didn't expect was the kind of culture it developed. "I have seen that the book club creates a safe space for women because large number of Indian women are readers. So, creating a safe space where women gather and can express themselves freely is a by-product that I hadn't envisioned originally but will be looking to recreate in this post-pandemic era."

Pravin Subramanian realised that with his book club he has also managed to create a safe space for women who freely express themselves, a by-product that he hadn't envisioned originally. Photo: Manjeet Thakur

Catering to varied interests
SwapBook has been around for over 11 years after it was started by the IT specialist as a hobby in June 2011. He explains, "I started the book club with the intent of meeting people who had opinions of their own and would read books, learn about new things and discuss them with others. The basic idea was that you are a reader or have experiences you want to talk about." Clearly, it has been successful to have lasted in a day and age when the Internet has simply taken over our lives. Maybe, it is in the fact that the book club, Subramanian says, is unlike others when it comes to their culture.

The 36-year-old shares, "Most book clubs usually discuss one book or a genre of books, if at all they have that flexibility. SwapBook doesn't have such limiting factors." This is because the club prevents anybody from feeling the pressure of having to do homework of sorts for something as relaxing and engaging as a meet to discuss books; it may just put them off. However, the Thane resident is quick to point out that if there are many non-readers than the quality of conversation also dips. "Over the years we have maintained an even keel between readers and non-readers. Most people who attend the meets are eclectic readers with unique reading habits. The diversity of conversations at our table is unique and this has been told to me by other book club organisers as well. There's enough for everyone out there," he adds.

Over the years, it is obvious that Subramanian has had many different kinds of experiences but he highlights that one interaction he will remember forever. "An attendee came for a meet after (Donald) Trump gave us a new word for Covfefe, and he read an article about us in Mid-day," he says. The book club has even helped people meet and fall in love and eventually get married.

Hooked to the club
The book club has seen many people over the years but there have always been many constants. Many of them who were present at the meet even shared stories from their past discussions and online interactions and how they continue to be in each other's lives till today.

One of the many is city-based travel entrepreneur Virendra Jain, who was attending his first meet since the pandemic came in, was all excited, especially because he had finally got to meet his tribe of avid readers. "I joined SwapBook about 8-9 years ago when I was looking for communities and people who were beyond the faff of destinations, books and experiences. How you experience Istanbul in Orhan Pamuk's books and how you experience it while physically in the Blue Mosque. It is very difficult to find people who can have a quality conversation with people who are on both these sides and that's how I bumped into the club."

However, Jain points out that he has evolved and become an e-reader like many others in the club but that doesn't stop them from sharing their love for quality books - both Indian and global writers.

"From fiction and non-fiction, architecture, history and now health increasingly. You can have any topic in SwapBook and there will be someone to contribute it," he adds.

Like Jain, Aditi Joshi, a gestalt psychotherapist has also been a part of the club for a long time. "The first time I joined SwapBook was for a walk and the first cup of tea at an Irani café and it felt like I had found my tribe. I had been a voracious reader my whole life till I was struck by palsy that I couldn't recover from and it is extremely hard for me to read now." However, what she discovered was that people who read books are actually "a compilation of books" and I was addicted to it.

"Books - which had become a place for me, had now suddenly come alive in my world again. I have met the most diverse people here - somebody who made knives, artists, geeks. All of them have opened up their world to me. If I ever have a confusion about something in my life, I have to just reach out to this family, I get treasures, wisdom, love and community. It feels like one of the treasures of the city and that's why I keep coming back," he says, leaving us to think about how the book club has formed so many relationships.

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