A treatise on Love I bought the gracefully printed hardcover, first edition of Graham Greene’s The Captain and the Enemy , printed by Reinhardt Books of London, in August, 2010. This was Green’s last novel which he published in 1988 three years before his death at the age of 87. A cryptic note that I wrote on the title page – I thought, then, that this gave a personal touch to my books, a practice I abandoned soon – tells me I bought it quite cheap from strandbookstall.com. Strand Book Stall, the iconic book shop, in Fort, Bombay, was started by T.N. Shanbhag in 1948 and closed down in 2018. In last few years, I read with horror, and sadness, as similar fate visited many such legendary bookshops in other cities: Lal Advani’s bookshop in Hazrat Ganj, Lucknow, T.S. Shanbaug’s Premier Bookshop on Church Street in Bangalore, V.G. Mani’s Manney’s bookstore in the camp area of Pune. These were in business for more than half a century, established before 1947, but, I believe, could ...