Up Front

with the Publisher

I attended not long ago a Pacific book trade seminar in Fiji, where one of the speakers was Shantilal Desai, founder and chief executive of Fiji’s Desai Book Depot. He was just one of a number of industry leaders who addressed the gathering that week, but there was none who made a greater impact on the audience. fit wasn’t only what he had to say about the book trade that created the interest, but the story which he unfold ed, modestly, about Shantilal Desai himself.

Shantilal has, from October, retired from active management of the company which he built from literally nothing into the biggest chain of book shops in the South Pacific.

What began as a few books in one corner of a tailor shop in Suva has developed into a chain of nine shops with further outlets to be opened soon. He remains as a director and consultant to the company, which on April 1 was acquired by the Fiji Native

Land Development Corporation.

Shantilal’s story is the story of a penniless Indian migrant to Fiji who made good through his own efforts.

Born in Bombay in 1918, Shantilal went to Fiji in September 1939, at the age of 21, with no English, and worked for an Indian merchant at Lautoka for S 6 a month for only six months. Then he was out of a job.

Before he had left Bombay he had taken a wife in an arranged marriage.

She was 14, and he left her behind in India until he could establish himself in Fiji, She waited nearly nine years. The war intervened and, in any case, for the first five years Shantilal was without work. They saw each other again for the first time in 1948 when she came out, by which time he had learned some English and got a clerical and book-keeping job in Suva.

Here was a man with no back ground of books - but with the drive to get on, and he had noticed during the war years that there were no book sellers to supply the big demand for books and magazines for the Allied fighting men stationed in Fiji, ’lt was out of this need, after the war, that I first decided to start a bookselling business,’ he recalls. ’I went to the bank and asked the man ager whether he could give me an over

draft to run my business. I was told that since I had no security they could not provide me with an overdraft.’ Nor would overseas publishers supply him with books. ’The business people of Suva used to laugh at me,’ he says, ’wondering how I was going to start a business without financial help of any sort, but I started to save money from my book keeping work and commenced to order books and magazines from London.

For the first four years it was total loss, and people told me that the booksell ing business was not going to be successful in Fiji.’

From there he began the slow climb to the successful business of today, which has been a leader in Islands edu cational bookselling and in the import ation of books.

Shantilal Desai and his bride of 14 are still married. Shantilal told the seminar that as far as his experience goes, an arranged marriage is a great success, and he has no complaints at all. One of the Desai offspring is Dr Satish Desai, prominent surgeon LRCP (London) MRCS (England), MB, BS (London). And Shantilal’s activ ities have never been all business, despite what one might expect. He has always been an active and effective participant in a long list of Fiji char ities and community organisations.

Desai Book Depot Ltd is now to be known as Desai Bookshops. The con tinuation of the name is not only a tribute to its founder the name of Desai will undoubtedly contribute to its continued success under its new

ownership.

Shantilal Desai