Ganesha bookstore still a beloved Ubud institution

Dewi Anggraeni, Contributor, Melbourne, Australia

In a place of rapid, sometimes frantic change, it is always reassuring to come across some constants. While we often concede to the need, and even enjoy the fruit of development, deep down we still hanker for the familiarity of what we know.

One of the constants of Ubud in Bali is Ganesha bookshop, which is now situated along the main street of the town, opposite the Ubud Post Office.

While it has relocated twice, from its original position along the road leading to the famous monkey forest, then across the road from its current location, the bookshop has retained its quaint, charming yet understated appearance.

Even the board bearing a golden picture of Ganesha, the Hindu God of knowledge and the arts, is not placed at the main entrance, but on a window facing the smaller side street.

The moment you step in, you will feel a subtle influence encouraging you to stay and browse, or even daydream. It is one of the charmed things visitors experience in Bali, especially in parts of the island a fair way from the beaten path.

On the other hand, what you are experiencing may just be the excitement of being surrounded by symbols of knowledge packaged in various attractive and presentable forms, made to last and linger by the gamelan music playing in the background.

The shop sells new, secondhand and antiquarian books, as well as CDs, musical instruments, magazines, cards and other gifts or souvenir items. It is frequented by tourists, expatriates and locals, who come to check out its wide variety of quality books, including its stock of rare and out of print volumes.

Ganesha was the first bookshop in Ubud, a labor of love of Australian Anita Scheeres and her husband, Balinese writer Ketut Yuliarsa Sastrawan.

Newly married in the 1980s, Anita and Ketut, residents of Sydney, found themselves returning to Ubud for holidays. Originally from Denpasar, Ketut found in Ubud what he was seeking as a writer: peace and solitude, and at the same time a feeling of being completely at home.

They decided to buy land near the monkey forest, still dominated by rice fields at the time. Feeling the need for a place where people would be able to trade reading materials, the couple started a book exchange business, managed by Ketut's father, who had then retired from his position as head of the office of Bali's culture and education ministry. In the meantime, Anita And Ketut would bring bags full of books each time they came for their holidays.

"We then placed the books in the store for exchange or sale. This way we were assured of obtaining more books for us to read while in Ubud," Anita recalled.

The shop quickly filled up as they had to keep adding more shelves to accommodate the books. So when they made a move to live more permanently in Ubud with their then two-year-old son in 1992, they also moved the shop to a larger location on the main street.

They soon tripled their secondhand book selection, then added a new books section, followed by musical instruments and other knick-knacks.

"Ketut and I have a deep love of books and have always been very aware of the joy that reading can offer," Anita replied when asked why they did not start a restaurant or boutique instead.

"It gave us so many opportunities to meet people from all over the world who shared our love of books. It also gave us a simple yet comfortable lifestyle in Ubud -- just enough to keep the store going and to pay for the necessities of life and a little extra for yearly trips to Sydney, to stock up on yet more books to sell in the store."

Ketut and Anita have never relied on shipping books into Bali. Apart from enjoying doing the selection themselves, they like to know where their books are at any given time.

"Shipping books is always haphazard, whether the books will indeed arrive, whether there will be 'import taxes' charged -- and we have never really found out what the official rate of duty is," explained Anita.

Anita believes that the secret of Ganesha's success as a bookstore has been the fact that they are always actively involved in choosing their books.

"We are very discerning about the books we purchase for the store. We don't just stock a mass of books, but rather select books that are topical, current, classic or just fine pieces of work," she said.

"We have found over the years that it is really pointless to have shelves and shelves of paperbacks because most of them just stay on the shelves."

The family has now moved back to Sydney where Jarrah, their son, goes to high school. To keep the store operating, Ketut and Anita have reliable staff who handle the day-to-day business, and in the meantime they travel frequently between Sydney and Ubud, with today's technology allowing them to stay in touch each day with what is going on in the store.

They have also moved into the Internet era, with a very active website.

"We also now sell Indonesian books that we purchase directly from the publishers. I purchase our Indonesian studies books around the world via the Internet and then bring them to Ubud each time I come. It is now a very solid part of our business," Anita recounted.

They have orders from many universities around the world for their Indonesian studies books. "But most of our business is still conducted face to face in the bookstore," she said.

They have no plans to build a modern, air-conditioned, multistory shop. They derive satisfaction from people who return year after year, and are pleased to find the shop still the same.

"And from still being able to provide them with 'a great find', or 'a book I've been looking everywhere for' and so on. This is our joy, our passion and why we still continue with Ganesha bookshop," Anita said.