This is a story from long ago, when the last remaining traces of the British still lurked in their old haunts among the pristine Himalayan hills of Darjeeling. These were the early fifties, in other words.

I would spend entire days at a small, dusty bookshop with a faded, green sign over it- a sign painted with gold letters that said: "Mr Mun-Chee's Books." The paint was chipped at many places; you could barely see the second 's'. The shabby old shop was located in a cul-de-sac, a few hundred meters away from my own home. But inside, it was another world. On the floor stood staggering, towering piles of books, yellowed and aged, and the shelves lining all the walls were crammed with journals, lexicons and biographies, dramas, each laboriously cataloged and meticulously arranged. Mr Mun-Chee dealt mostly in antique books; first editions of books, long forgotten, books one hardly ever encountered anymore. There were sixteen editions of Jane Eyre, twenty-two of The Pickwick Papers, and fifty of The Pilgrim's Progress. It was not famous, but it was unique; customers barely ever walked in, as it was so hidden away in a run-down neighborhood. Tabby, the black Tom, my only possession, and I, were only disturbed five times that we spent there. And we spent nearly an entire year at the shop.

The shop was my sanctuary. After the daily ordeal of school, I invariably called out to Tabby and set out for the shop, to read, read, read, with Tabby curled up around my legs.