A life, in and among words

Rajen Mehra's Never Out of Print is a memoir of not just a man but also Rupa Publications and the growth of Indian publishing

- MANDIRA NAYAR

It is a freezing day in Delhi’s winter that has outlived its novelty. The door of the Rupa office in the chaotic grey of Yusuf Sarai, with endless rows of shops, opens and music from the newly opened coffee shop wafts in.

Rajen Mehra arrives right on time. “I am actually two minutes early,”he says. At 77, Mehra is spry, with the restless energy of a self-made man. At 22, Mehra travelled across India on a train to learn about publishing, a journey that changed his life. He was waiting to join a management school, but the train journey from then Calcutta to Kerala taught him much more than he would ever learn in books. He would, however, sell them.

Never Out of Print is a memoir of not just a man but also Rupa Publications and the growth of Indian publishing. This book or the idea of it started when he was in hospital for severe breathlessness in 2010. When he got home, he wrote. He first faced rejection from a friend, till the book emerged in this form—breezy, interspersed with pictures, memories and vignettes of his life.

His great-grandmother had told his granduncle, who started Rupa, that if his first customer was a Muslim, his business would thrive. As it happened, the man who stopped to buy the Collins English Dictionary on August 17, 1936, at his stall was Humayun Kabir. “At auspicious occasions, I will always invite a Muslim to do that,” says Mehra. “People get upset about it. What is to get upset about? They are humans, we are humans.”