Dileep S has been a travelling vendor of books for 23 years

Dileep’s customers are mostly policemen and government employees in Thiruvananthapuram

There is a buzz around a sightly built man on a motorcycle at the State Armed Police (SAP) campus at Peroorkada in Thiruvananthapuram. Conversations are animated and after an hour or two, each of the policemen leaves with a pile of books in hand while the vendor of stories travels to his next destination.

Jayakumar SS, a retired policeman, recounts that he met Dileep S in 1998 when he was a police constable at the SAP camp. “Dileep used to come on foot with a collection of the latest books. For more than 23 years, he has been selling books of all genres on our campus. By now, he knows the preferences of each of his customers and we have come to rely on his recommendations.”

For 42-year-old Dileep, son of a rubber tapper from Kuttichal, 28 km from Thiruvananthapuram, selling books is a vocation and an extension of his love for reading and books. “Vidhyadharan Vasudevan, an uncle of mine, was an avid reader. He influenced me to take up reading. I followed in the footsteps of a friend and took up selling books at the age of 19 to help my family meet ends. Although he stopped, I continued with my sales,” he says.

Initially, Dileep used to travel by bus from Kuttichal to visit city-based publishers and purchase their books. “I bought books from Premier, a sales agency, which offered a 40% discount. I was able to earn a reasonable profit from sales. In those days, there were many publishers in the capital city — Premier, Universal, Akshara, Computech and Prashanti. Many shut shop as big publishers entered the market and reading habits changed,” he says.

At present, he buys books from a couple of leading publishers with outlets in the city. His USP is that he brings the books to his customers’ doorstep.

Dileep’s biggest customers are policemen. Many of them pay for the books in instalments. “Dileep is like family now. Thanks to him, I became a good reader and a collector of good books, which I consider as my biggest savings,” says Jayakumar.

Dileep asserts that many policemen are voracious readers and, as a result, “I was able to widen my reading and knowledge of books. For instance, once, Sivaprasad, a policeman at the camp, requested me to get him the translation of VS Khandekar’s Jnanapith award-winning Marathi novel, Yayati. In that way, I also end up reading some of those books.”