Aluva: A soon-to-be-inaugurated book stall from Aluva in Kochi shot into limelight after renowned author Paulo Coelho posted a photo of the shop on his Instagram page.
Enthusiastic readers have since been making fervent searches about the book stall named 'Once Upon a Time'. The Instagram post garnered lakhs of views and likes within hours of posting the image.
The book shop is located near the SP office along the Aluva-Perumbavoor private bus route. The shop will be inaugurated in the first week of July.
The four-storeyed building is designed in such a way that the top portion appears as four books stacked together, which includes Paulo Coelho's bestseller 'The Alchemist'. The other three books are ‘Moby Dick’ by Herman Melville, ‘Aadujeevitham’ by Benyamin and ‘Harry Potter’ by J K Rowling.
The 3,400-sq-ft building is situated on five cents of land.
The book stall breaks the conventions not just in its external appearance but in interior designing as well. All four floors have four different colours. The books are arranged in contemporary style. Railings of the 40-ft steel staircase also have provisions to arrange the books. Light shades have also been designed to resemble books.
Malayalam, English, and Hindi books will be sold here. Notebooks of 'Once Upon a Time' will also be put up on sale.
A Aji Kumar, a native of Choondi in Ernakulam, and his wife V M Manju are behind this Rs 2-crore initiative. Aji Kumar was an assistant engineer with the electricity board, while Manju was a software engineer at the TCS. They quit their jobs 13 years ago and started the Adiniru Academy, a tuition centre at Aluva for students who failed to clear the BTech exam.
Their interest in reading prompted the couple to start the book stall.
"The idea of the design of stacked books was conceived by my husband and myself two years ago. We both being book lovers it was our desire to bring about an ambience of a perfect book shop, where one can have enough room to select books and check them," says Manju.
On how Paulo Coelho got the image she says, "We don't know exactly how but we're given to understand that a passer-by must have taken the picture of the shop and posted it on social media and Paulo Coelho must have got it from there."
The building was designed and constructed by Paravoor native Roy Thomas and K K Vinod of Aluva.
