One of the most important landmark of Allahabad whose reputation spread all over India was the A H Wheelers & Co with its headquarters located at the then Elgin Road in Civil Lines. With a chain of book stalls at almost all railways station, A H Wheelers was co-founded by Emile Moreau, a French author, T K Banerjee, an Indian businessman and others in Allahabad in 1877, operating from railway stations. Coming from a landowning family from Dhaka (now in Bangladesh), the Banerjees moved to Allahabad more than 150 years ago. Here, the young T.K. Banerjee became a book hoarder and struck up a friendship with fellow page-turner and Frenchman Emile Moreau. At one time, the two of them had more than 45,000 books between them. After repeated threats of being thrown out of the house along with the books, Banerjee and Moreau came up with a plan. They wanted others to enjoy the books as much as they did. So, in the early 1870s, the two took part of their pile, spread a sheet at the railway platform in Allahabad and started selling the books at a fraction of the cost. By day-end, they had sold out. They continued this little business till they had no books left. And the idea of making their makeshift stall permanent took shape. The two men got a licence agreement for bookstalls at stations. The British were at the time rapidly expanding the rail network and this seemed like an interesting plan. Moreau, who had travelled to England, named the company after a popular London book-store chain—Arthur Henry Wheeler—and they were set. As a hat-tip to their initial profit, the two opened the first stall at the Allahabad station in 1877; soon their stalls were spread across the entire rail network. In 1913, when Moreau decided to leave India, Banerjee bought him out and became the sole owner. Today, the company has 378 stalls at 258 railway stations in 14 zones of Indian Railways. After the Banerjees it was my grandfather late S Husain Haider who was the most influential figure at the Wheelers being the General Manager. He is standing next to late Morarji Desai when Pandit Nehru visited Wheelers in 1950 as Prime Minister. My grandfather was a great friend of Feroze Gandhi as the two shared common interests English and books. Feroze Gandhi was the Editor of Associated Journals that published National Herald and my grandfather who was a prolific English writer used to contribute and also advise him
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 06:43:39 +0000
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