T.S. Shanbhag died of coronavirus on May 4th

ON DAYS WHEN he was working, T.S. Shanbhag kept to the same routine. He would drive in from the west of the city and park near M. Chinnaswamy stadium by 8.30am. From there he would walk to the centre, to Koshy’s restaurant on St Mark’s Road, where he had his morning coffee: the best in Bangalore, proper south Indian, milky yet strong. It was hard to resist the breakfasts on offer, appam with vegetable stew, potato smileys and the rest, served by waiters who glided about with the deference of English butlers. But he preferred just to banter with his old friend Prem Koshy, who would greet him with a hearty “How are you, my dear Sir?” and later, repaying the favour, might well drop in to buy books.

Premier Book Shop stood diagonally opposite, on Church Street, a modest place shaded by a honge tree. His place and Koshy’s were relics of the sleepy Bangalore of the past, before it became tech city and the malls and multiplexes moved in. Increasingly now the corner swarmed with traffic, hooting motorbikes and swerving autorickshaws, but he dodged neatly between them. He was limber from all his crouching and stretching to retrieve this or that book, daily acrobatics in the service of good reading.