Book-Boy

A Story by Abishai100

Amlan is a book-boy in India who moves to the UK for a new book-shop venture which leads him to greater depth!

A simple short about a man intrigued by culture-readings and drawn to the 'adventure' of book-shop dollars...and love. Inspired by Notting Hill.

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Amlan lived in Bombay and was a book-shop owner and read/sold books about parallels between culture and special culture/country specific folk-tale books like The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer).

After reading Eamon de Valera's work on the comparisons between India and Ireland's specific anticolonial resistance against British rule in the 20th Century, Amlan decided he wanted to understand the deep aesthetic/cultural parallels between India and Ireland and what made the two countries similar in visage.

He started collecting photos of saree-designs from India which had a 'certain splash' of Irish design/visage, sarees with a distinctly earthen tone of dark greens or reds that reminded him of the rustic designs of 'earth-dirt' mobility, characteristic of Ireland imagination!

He also started collecting images of Irish women in traditions dress/clothing that gave the appearance of a rather naturalistic but village-like visage of land-based pedestrianism, ironically characteristic/reflective of India's sense of natural motion on land. The comparisons were quite interesting and bright.

He'd grown up in Bombay/Mumbai (India) and studied at Dartmouth (USA) before returning to India to open a book-shop in Bombay/Mumbai. He liked living by the water and driving at night in his Maruti/Suzuki sedan-car and taking in the night-air and reflecting on recent favorite book reads/sells to customers at his popular Indian shop in night-lit Bombay/Mumbai.

He made quite a good living as a 30-something man in India collecting/selling books of cultural significance from around the world, and his approach to book consumerism/collecting ironically reflected a modern sense of wonder about globalism imagination and culture-insights. His book-shop was well-managed and brightly-lit, and customers appreciated his sense of professionalism and courtesy and knowledge.

After sitting through a children's event reading of Peter Pan at his Indian book-shop, Amlan decided to travel to Belfast (Northern Ireland) and open a new book-shop there, in a troubled city of sectarian (Catholic-Protestant) violence and aggression, so he'd feel really 'immersed' in the world he so much read about in books!

Settling into and adjusting into Belfast wasn't easy, but Amlan managed to integrate himself into Northern Ireland culture and street-life and visited a popular pub-and-eatery after work-hours in his new book-shop in Belfast. He took a bicycle ride around the streets at night sometimes after work to take in the night-air and brood about the sectarian troubles arising from economic frustrations between Irish-Catholics and British-Protestants.

His Belfast book-shop was doing good business and rivaled another iconic Belfast bookstore, and Amlan was feeling quite happy in his new niche on Earth, in his new life in Northern Ireland as a book-shop owner in the troubled but surprisingly charming area of the United Kingdom (Europe). His customers liked the way he presented himself and his world-culture books as symbols of modern academic/private imagination.

Amlan met a gorgeous Irish-Catholic woman, a new customer at his Belfast book-shop, who found him nerdy but kind and somewhat dashing. Shelbye, the woman, was 29 and surprised that Amlan would want to leave peaceful India to manage a book-shop in troubled Belfast (Northern Ireland), and he told her he wanted a life 'lived' on Earth to live out his sense of adventurism he procured from his actual book collection. They started dating and eventually fell in love, and he started making some really nice paintings of Shelbye after she moved into his new Belfast apartment.