If you are at the Tatanagar station and feeling hungry or thirsty, here’s something that should be music to your ears - beverage, confectionery, potato chips and packed water bottles apart from books and periodicals, are now available at your service inside the station.

The shift in the policy of the Wheeler, the famous bookstores chain is attributed to the pandemic which caused considerably abysmal footfall at railway stations, including Tatanagar. "Now we are selling a variety of chips, biscuits, beverage items at our outlet ever since we reopened the shop two months ago. Now we have turned the shop into a multipurpose business," said Chunmun Rai, owner of the AH Wheeler shop at Tatanagar station while talking to The Telegraph Online.

Rai said the company had to change the policy due to the waning book reading habits among the readers. "The sale of books and periodicals had dropped significantly. After the spell of Covid, the footfalls at the Tatanagar station also dropped considerably, further hampering book sale. This led the management of AH Wheeler to turn exclusive books stalls to multi-purpose shops," Rai pointed out. The book store owner said the sale of items other than books has boomed with more and more passengers thronging for delicacies and packed water bottles in his shop.

At the Tatanagar station, there are two Wheeler shops and one at the Chakradharpur railway station in West Singhbhum district. All these shops are doing brisk business despite a disappointing footfall due to Covid. The famous bookstores chain has been operating primarily at railway stations across the country since the British era.