We are sitting among more than 1,300 books that fill the shelves of his office.

The majority of the collection is focused on South Asia at the moment, but we've also got a growing Arab list, books from the African continent.

But India is where we started because that's the context I know best.

Balmohan says collaborations with projects like Nowhere Books are essential.

The collaboration with Nowhere Bookstore is like a fellow traveller.

Our friends who are running this bookshop come project space is foregrounding literature that is meaningful to a diaspora of Chinese inherited people, so to speak.

There's a few different reasons why I think what Nowhere Bookstore and Spore Books and other independents are doing.