Thursday, May 01, 2008

A Mid-week's Find

A couple of days ago I happened to notice that AA Husain had a sale at their store at Abids. My office is within walking distance from Abids so I ambled across yesterday in the afternoon to AA Husain’s. There used to be a shop selling furnishings etc called ‘Haji Kurban Sons (or Brothers?) beside AA Husain’s but now it seems to have shut down since AA Husain has their sale in that empty shop. Apparently, the sale had begun quite a long time ago and is up to the end of this month- May 31. The books are offered at a 20% discount.

There are a lot of titles in the sale, most of them the latest books including Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Enchantress of Florence’. I saw almost all the books of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Maria Vargos Llosa, VS Naipaul and also of all the well known Indian writers. I saw ‘Granta 100’ and plenty of screen writing books, most of them by Syd Field. I also saw Che Guevera’s ‘Motorcycle Diaries.’ There were hundreds of titles on management, self-help etc on sale. I couldn’t decide which book to buy because of one practice of AA Husain’s that I dislike.

For some reason I cannot understand all books in the AA Husain stores are covered with a cellophane wrapping so you just look at the front and back covers only. I wonder how many people buy books without flipping through a few pages and sampling the writing. I just cannot buy books like that unless it happens to be a really interesting title which is what I found on the cover of one book I finally bought at the sale.

The title of the book was ‘Nosepicking for Pleasure’ by Roland Flicket. It was an unusual book that intrigued me so I had to buy it. Another reason was that the book was about a habit that a majority of my fellow Hyderabadis seem to be naturally adept at. We Hyderabadis are so focused on this activity and so good at it we can pay equal attention to our driving while at it. It is a subject worthy of further detailed research and hence the reason why I bought this book shelling down no less than two hundred rupees for it!

Of course, there will be a review here sometime in the future.

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