The Sunday Haul

Whoever it was on that Emirates flight who flicked the March 2007 issue of Conde Nast Traveller that I found this Sunday at Abids definitely could only have been someone from Hyderabad. I can say it with certainty for two reasons. One, because I found it in Hyderabad. Two, because there was a sticker on the cover page asking the magazine to be returned after reading as ‘a courtesy to fellow passengers.’ No one other than a true blue Hyderabadi can resist doing the opposite. When we don’t follow traffic rules on the roads how can anyone expect us to follow something even sillier in the air? As for courtesy, if we were to follow such niceties then Hyderabad wouldn’t have got this far.

Jokes apart, last Sunday I had a good haul of three books, two magazines (one of them the Conde Nast Traveler) and yet another Mont Blanc catalogue. I was at Abids a little past eleven and though I realized I had forgotten to bring a cap, the cloudy weather made the browsing quite pleasant. It is the time of the year in Hyderabad when the sun blazes down fiercely and the only thing to do is to wear a cap outdoors.

The first book I found was Joan Didion’s ‘Run River’, a novel published sometime in 1978. I got this book for twenty rupees. I have been trying to lay my hands on her other book,‘The White Album’, which I missed buying sometime last year. But I am glad I found this book on Sunday. I am waiting for her latest bestseller ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ to turn up at Abids.

The next find was Gay Talese’s ‘Thy Neighbour’s Wife’, a brick of a book of nearly 650 pages that I got for only twenty rupees. I have heard a lot about this book of non-fiction.

But the find of the day was undoubtedly Tom Wolfe’s ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’ which I got for, again, only twenty rupees. The blurb says it is ‘the best book on the hippies’ and it is another book I have read much about. By the way, Wolfe is an avid fountain pen fan.

I found the March 2007 issue of Conde Nast Traveler and got it for twenty-five rupees. There were some absolutely stunning pictures of castles in Bavaria- the Herrenchiemsee with its Hall of Mirrors and also of the world’s most famous castle, ‘Neuschwanstein’ built by Ludwig I? It was brand new and I was glad to find a nice magazine on destinations I can begin dreaming about.

The other magazine I found was a surprise find. It was the latest, meaning March 2008, issue of ‘The Atlantic’. I got it for only ten rupees. There was the February 2008 issue as well but I felt this was more than enough for a week’s reading.

Finally I came upon the last treasure of the day- a Mont Blanc catalog of 2002 that had me salivating when I saw all those beautiful fountain pens. It was titled “Is that You?’, and apart from pictures of some stunning fountain pens it also had pictures of other MB products- watches, wallets, belts etc. I had eyes only for the fountain pens especially the brown and gold colored Meisterstuck Solitaire Citrin and the cute Boheme Vert and Boheme Je T’Aime in sterling silverm white gold and resin. All these fountain pens have begun to appear in my dreams since Sunday.