It's a landmark at Mysore's Krishnarajendra Circle; it stocks books in Sanskrit, Kannada besides English. Yoga books are a speciality and the bookstore attracts enthusiasts, notably foreigners who come to Mysore to learn yoga. Book lovers looking for works unavailable elsewhere and browsers finicky about their of pick could try Geetha Bookhouse. They can count on a helpful staff to go out of their way to satisfy a devotee of books.
Karnataka Governor T N Chaturvedi, who drops in whenever he is in town, wanted Narayana Rao's 'Visvesaraya' and Basheer Hussain's book on the Cauvery Water Dispute, both out of print. An obliging bookhouse owner procured it from their records room. "We had a copy of each book held for our file," says Gururaja Rao, whose father and brother set up the book shop in early fifties.
Mr Rao says they stock books in the general category and meet requests for select books in Kannada and Sanskrit for libraries elsewhere, such as Hyderabad, New Delhi and other places, and also get orders from Kannada Sanghas in India and abroad. He admits there has been a decline in business in recent years. The bookshop has seen a drop in the number of regulars over the years, though we still get foreigners looking for yoga books, says Mr Rao. Geetha Bookhouse has seen better days.
The governor, who spent an hour browsing during his last visit (July 18, 2005), ordered two copies of DVG's 'Mankuthimana Kagga', the extra copy, for the Raj Bhavan library. The governor's pick of other books included one by U G Krishnamurthy, Sri Aurobindo's biography, and T J S George's 'The First Refuge of Scoundrels' - (Sourced from 'Star of Mysore' and 'The Mysore Mail')
