For the past 17 years, Nigel R Khan has been us­ing his book­store to trans­form the south­ern land­scape through the pow­er of knowl­edge. Through books, Khan has ed­u­cat­ed and en­riched the lives of thou­sands of peo­ple who have walked through his doors—in the South as well as oth­er parts of T&T.

"From a point of love, I think your stores rep­re­sent a part of your per­son­al­i­ty and it is re­al­ly a tem­ple for books. I think the print­ed word is sa­cred and it is im­mutable. I do not be­lieve that it will ever fade in the ether, de­spite what peo­ple have said," Khan said.

Born in­to a fam­i­ly trad­ing in books, Khan, a South­ern­er, fell in love with read­ing from a ten­der age. Pri­or to branch­ing off on his own, he worked at his un­cle's book­store for 15 years where his pas­sion for books deep­ened. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his Mara­bel­la book­store and ware­house, an af­fa­ble Khan spoke pas­sion­ate­ly about the im­por­tance of read­ing and his ever­last­ing love for books.

While he be­lieves that the print text could nev­er be oblit­er­at­ed by e-read­ers, he said the tech­nol­o­gy has sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al book busi­ness.

"I think we’ve lost 20 per cent (in the book busi­ness) but it has brought back a lot of peo­ple to read­ing, to the pow­er of the print­ed word, I think that’s im­mutable.

"The 20 per cent I am talk­ing about is mag­a­zines, pe­ri­od­i­cals, quick read­ing ar­ti­cles, com­put­er man­u­als, that’s gone... mag­a­zines are all but gone. It's hard to find a mag­a­zine be­cause you can get on that on­line, but there are cer­tain core books which re­main, for in­stance, Michelle Oba­ma's au­to­bi­og­ra­phy (in print) was top sell­ing."

Not­ing that 20 per cent is a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline for a small is­land, he said book­stores have to take cer­tain mea­sures to cush­ion that im­pact.

"That's why we are see­ing shrink­age be­cause you can’t car­ry every­thing, see­ing books not as a com­mod­i­ty, but as car­ry­ing the right books with the right ti­tles. Peo­ple want to read what's the lat­est, what's the trend, what's new, that's what peo­ple want to read. Most times it is al­ways bet­ter when you open a book, you could read a hun­dred lives just by read­ing a book."

Khan, who has four book­stores in the San Fer­nan­do area, be­lieves a book­store pro­vides a ser­vice and ex­pe­ri­ence like no oth­er busi­ness.

"Once you go in­to a book­store in your com­mu­ni­ty, you feel up­lift­ed, you feel trans­formed. It is not about go­ing af­ter the mon­ey. It is not about sell­ing you a book and push­ing you out the door.

"The idea be­hind it is that you are trans­form­ing lives and chil­dren’s lives. Just imag­ine some­one may be walk­ing in there with a kid, that child may be­come the prime min­is­ter or some­body great, all that po­ten­tial for great­ness walk­ing through your door."

Khan said his busi­ness and the way he treats his work­ers was cen­tred around trans­form­ing and up­lift­ing lives.

"Every de­ci­sion I make here in my ware­house or with my peo­ple af­fects peo­ple down the line. We have over 100

peo­ple work­ing for us and by ex­ten­sion their fam­i­lies, if I make a bad de­ci­sion it res­onates through­out."

This is why he en­sures that there is a high lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism at his out­lets.

"Chil­dren who are more pro­gres­sive are the ones who are pro­fes­sion­al, who know the val­ue of the print­ed word and those are the peo­ple who come in­to the stores on a reg­u­lar ba­sis and ac­tu­al­ly buy books to keep their kids read­ing be­cause they know that is the sure way to suc­ceed, be­cause if you read you have no prob­lem with SEA."

How­ev­er, he said there were too many peo­ple ad­dict­ed to their phones, tablets and oth­er de­vices.

"We have too many peo­ple who are stuck on these de­vices and are not on books. Long ago they said re­li­gion was the opi­um of the mass­es. Well, I think now the iPhone is the opi­um of the mass­es be­cause we have an in­vert in val­ues. So the in­vert­ed val­ues are an­oth­er big deal be­cause we have be­come too de­pen­dent on these de­vices.

"When we write we re­mem­ber. It is part of the nat­ur­al learn­ing process."

He has no doubt that the print­ed words will nev­er be phased out.

'I love the warmth of the peo­ple in the south­ern city'

Khan said what he loves the most about the south­ern city is the warmth of the peo­ple. What dis­turbs him the most, how­ev­er, is poor cus­tomer ser­vice.

Khan not­ed that while 90 per cent of the jobs avail­able are in re­tail, there is no re­tail acad­e­my on the is­land.

"None of these peo­ple ever get any re­tail train­ing di­rect­ly. Imag­ine if the lo­cal uni­ver­si­ty here or one of our lo­cal col­leges were to of­fer cours­es in re­tail where peo­ple who have just fin­ished schools want to go in­to ei­ther restau­rant or what­ev­er as­pect of busi­ness, you can be trained on that ba­sis—How to op­er­ate a linx ma­chine, what's a visa ma­chine, what's a point-of-sale soft­ware, what is a scan­ner. Just the ba­sics and we would up­lift the lev­el of ser­vice in this coun­try," he said.