“Netru naan unnai paartha paarvai veru
Neengatha ennamaga aanai indru
Unnodu naanum pona dhooram yaavum nenjilae
Reengaara ninaivugalaaga anaiyai ingae minjudhae
“Noolarundha pattam polae
Unnai suttri naanum aada
Kaigal neeti neeyum pidikka
Kaathirukiren
“Idharkellam arthanagal yenna
Ketka vendum unnai
Kaalam kai koodinaal…”
These are the opening lines of the hit number ‘Kadhaippoma’ from the 2020 Tamil movie ‘Oh My Kadavule’. With music composed by Leon James and sung by Sid Sreeram, its video on the music label’s YouTube channel launched in February had close to 24 million views in early November 2020. Those who know Tamil will marvel at the simplicity of the words and the depth of their meaning. In many ways, they are a reflection of the lyricist Ko Sesha (Seshasayee Gopi), who never studied Tamil in school but grew up with books of all hues.
Growing up with books
Sesha credits the reading for expanding his mind and imagination. He is the only child of former Higginbothams staffer Gopi Sampath and school librarian Krishna Priya. His mother is still the librarian at his school – Padma Sheshadri Bala Bhavan in KK Nagar, Chennai. On the same street as the school today is his brainchild, Stories Library Café. It is a treasure trove of about 35,000 books and a ‘library café’ that is making reading cool again.
“My dad started buying books for me when I was 2 or 3 years old. By the time I was 9 or 10, he figured that he had bought so many books for me that it was like a mini library for kids,” says Sesha, 31, who himself became a father in October this year.
Moving from Higginbothams, his father tried to launch a book store but that didn’t take off as planned. He ended up launching a library for kids elsewhere in KK Nagar. Bookworms Library was born in 2001.
“We had quite a few young members. As a kid myself, I remember the place being full of kids and full of energy. At the time when no library had a reading room, Bookworms had one with bean bags, sofas and the works. It was a nice atmosphere,” recounts Sesha.
His father observed that while the kids liked to take their time choosing their books, the accompanying parents were always in a hurry. Sesha likens that in jest to men left with nothing to do at textile stores while their better halves chose their threads. For this reason, Bookworms started adding books that would engage readers of all ages. And when a child was accompanied by a grandparent whose reading language of choice was Tamil, that led Bookworms to expand to include Tamil titles. By 2004-’05, the library had a sizeable collection.
“When members started signing up, we realised that needed to buy thousands of books,” adds Sesha, who grew up with the library.
But Bookworms needed to reinvent itself to stay relevant in the age of the screen. Moving to new premises with the concept of a library café was the chosen path, and Stories Library Café was born in late 2018. There are many who walk into the café and discover the library, and then rediscover their love for books. A lot of investment has gone into creating an ambience to enrich that moment.
“There are cases of people who used to read when they were young but suddenly lost touch. Now maybe 10 or 15 years later, they rediscover the love for reading. There are a lot of such romances that bloom again,” observes the lyricist with larger aspirations in cinema.
A fair bit of thought went into creating Stories, because it was born to address the crisis of dwindling readership.
Augmenting revenue in changing times
“Membership at Bookworms was dropping consistently – obviously, because people were spending time on their tablets and mobiles. They were not just reading online but consuming all kinds of content, especially video. So while they were consuming more content than before, there was an understandable drop in readership,” says Sesha.
The financial impact of this on Bookworms was severe, notes the former Deloitte staffer. One option considered was a close-down sale of the enviable collection of books.
“But I thought, this is 20 years of my dad’s life. This is his second child, his dream. No one else had this kind of collection. There was of course Eloor Library. I used to find my kind of books there when they weren’t available in Bookworms, which had more of the popular titles. Even they closed down. Eloor shutting shop was a rude shock to us. We looked up to them. Their membership base was higher, charges were higher. We thought, if Eloor had to shut down, how are we going to make it work?” reminisces Sesha.
It all came down to how Stories could augment revenue. Sesha suggested to his parents that one way to keep business alive was to get in more footfalls and keep them hooked with the experience for a couple of hours. The first thought was to provide a simple coffee and some snacks, with the library remaining the main act. But the thought evolved.
Creating an experience
“No one goes out for hunger. Swiggy caters to that. When we were young, going out to Hotel Saravana Bhavan was an occasion. Today people dine out only for the experience. Shopping is an experience. Especially for the upper middle class, today you don’t shop at the regular neighborhood store for clothes, you go to a mall for the experience. Even for reading, if it’s an old, humble library, I felt people won’t step out,” reasons the commerce graduate.
“I felt the place has to exude charm, pull people in. In the process of creating the brand ‘Stories’, slowly things started gaining scale and it became a full-fledged restaurant and café,” he reveals.
From ideation, it took two months to create Stories Library Café as it stands today. For Sesha, who cut his teeth in real estate before taking the plunge into cinema full-time, it was a great experience talking to chefs and working on the design. One wall of the café is decorated by discarded books – 600 of them have been drilled in. An encyclopedia at one end lights up the place. Things bought during international trips add to the décor and all these elements have helped it evolve into a Parisian café. The menu, like the café, is small but soulful.
It has been conceived as a community space where one can create or relive old memories. One often finds groups of young guests bringing in an occasion. In addition to the café and library on the first floor, a roofed outdoor area on the ground floor serves as a celebration zone for parties.
Membership to the library has gone up by about 10 percent with the new positioning, reveals Sesha. He adds, “Reading is not a business that is going to explode. In the business of reading, our bet is completely on the delivery side. We have some plans to expand, we are looking at investors.”
The delivery he is talking about is the Bookworms mobile van branded ‘Library on wheels’, which crisscrosses the city and takes books close to members’ homes, a base separate from the 3000-odd active members of the library. It has been in operation since 2009. With people increasingly used to getting things at their doorstep, the van library user base is slowly increasing, notes Sesha.
While Stories Library Café’s website is not one where you can read e-books, it enlists the titles and offers an ‘Online Social Library’ experience – with books chosen by members delivered to their homes. The software for the website was built in-house, as they could not find a library software that met their expectations. Now, other libraries are also using Bookworms’ software.
A ‘Home Library’ service offers 120 books a year for Rs.4,999 or 60 for Rs.2,999 or even 30 for Rs.1,999. Selected books will be delivered to readers’ homes over 5, 3 or 2 trips respectively. Not just homes, even offices are using the service to offer employees a reading experience. Everyone needs a break from screens, especially now.
Taking the plunge
In six good years at the real estate firm he worked for, Sesha had risen to the top of multiple functions by 2018. He then decided to take the plunge and pursue his cinema aspirations full-time. He was 28. He could afford to fail, he felt. For someone who wrote his first song in 2015, it must have been quite a wait.
“I was always interested in writing, directing and acting. I am not really someone you can call a lyricist. But yes, reading books leads to a good bank of imaginative ideas and if you can marry it with the ability to play with words, it works,” observes Sesha.
His first song was for a serial on Kalaignar TV composed by his friend Karthikeya Murthy. Another friend from school, Leon James, was an aspiring music director when they met after long. They jammed up and created a song that they put out on YouTube. Actor-director Raghava Lawrence was filming Kanchana-2 at the time heard it and fell in love with it. He wanted the song in his movie. ‘Vaaya en veera’ was part of Kanchana-2, and Leon James and Ko Sesha became part of the credits on cinema screens for the first time.
“It (the song) did fairly well. The film was a big hit. I started getting some more work. Slowly, I started working with other music directors. And all of this I was side-pedaling with my day job. I know my limitations as a lyricist and I know what works for me. Writing lyrics is my way of staying in touch with cinema. It was (and is) a bridge. I would like to write, direct and probably act in my film,” reiterates Sesha.
He has worked with composers including Vivek-Mervin, Vijay Anthony and Thaman and shares a good camaraderie, he reveals, with fellow lyricists. The one thing he regrets is that Tamil lyricists do not get their due, be it in terms of pay or appreciation. To make his point, he simply points us to the ‘Kadhaippoma’ video on YouTube and its comments section. While there is well-deserved praise for the singer and composer, there is also lavish praise for the lyrics that have been reproduced among comments. But there is no mention of the lyricist credited with the song.
He observes, “Tamil lyricists are actually the custodians of the Tamil language. But they do not get the respect they deserve, right from how your name appears. I am able to say this because I am not just a lyricist, because I am not dependent on this for a living. The cinema industry honours those who earn money for the industry. And the audience appreciates who acts, and who composes. 75 percent of the comments on a song may talk about the lyrics, but not about the lyricist.”
In one of many candid moments in the conversation, Sesha confesses that he has stayed away from interviews and publicity. He believes there is much more to achieve. The hunger is evident. He continues to write songs, even as his other cinema aspirations have been put on hold by the Covid19 pandemic.
If Stories Library Café was the bridge to bring back readers to the library, writing lyrics is Sesha’s bridge to realising his dreams as a creator. That bridge will keep getting stronger with time. But he is clear that it is still a bridge to what he wants to be doing – bringing stories to life on the silver screen.