Stationary shops?

No. Not Stationary. Stationery shops.

As a young person I used to frequent the V. Perumal Chetty Store in the LIC Building. I would buy the Hoe and Co diary.

In later years I sometimes went to George Town area and have a look at the stationery shops in Anderson and Bunder Street areas.

In Mount Road area my favorite haunts were International Traders, Wilfred Stores and the one in
State Bank Street.

The most famous shop in our area is the one known as Camlin shop. Actually the company is
Hindustan Trading Corporation and in later years I supplied an air-conditioner to the owner.
It is one shop where you could get all art materials. Now that shop has shifted to the first floor
of Pratap Plaza (Vitan complex) in Royapettah High Road.

The other shops in our area are the Amar's Traders in the corner of A.S.Salai and R.H. Road.
A nice shop. The most popular in Gopalapuram? Of course it is AA Traders, since it is
situated very near the schools. Aslam is a good friend of mine and he also happens to be
my nephew  Prakash's classmate. Did I supply an air-conditioner to him? Yes, I did.

The A-Premier stores in Mowbray's Road is one very good shop. The owners are related to
Amar's.

As a young boy I went to Indo-Burma Stationers at George Town and was awe struck. Being a whole sale
shop, it was huge.

Few years back the stationery shops used to do good business during March and April, as business
houses were busy buying ledgers, note-books and so on. After the advent of computerised accounting,
Tally and all that, ledgers are just not available. 

I love the Ashwini 80 pages note-book and on once occasion when the particular size was not
available I traced down the manufacturer and sent a boy all the way to Tondiarpet to their factory
to get the note-books for me. I had made a habit of using these note-books as my enquiry register
and would hate to have a note-book of different size as the most recent one.

ITC has made very good inroads into this market with their Classmate series. Talking of classmate,
I am reminded of a joke told by Anand, PRS(Mani)'s friend: We are not only classmates, but
glassmates, too!!

And if you wondered how I could reel out so many stationery shops, it was my dream to own a
nice looking stationery shop, leaving my sales job, stop wandering around and stay stationary
in my stationery shop!!!