The Midweek Haul

A long time ago, maybe ten years ago, I came across a book that I picked up hesitantly. It had no proper cover and only a white paper with the title scribbled on it with black sketch pen was the cover. It was fairly thick and the person said I could have it for fifteen rupees. I bought it and when I went home and read a few pages I found it was a real treasure. The book was Stephen Fry's 'Paperweight'. I had come across another copy a couple of years ago but missed buying it. But last Thursday I found another good copy of the same book and picked it up for ninety rupees in a second hand bookstore at Abids. 'Paperweight' has more than 120 articles filling up more than four hundred and fifty pages. I like the 'Trefusis' pieces in it. This is the only book by Stephen Fry I read and the others did not appear so good though I haven't read them.

Sometime last month I had written about buying 'The Vintage Book of Indian Writing' at a second hand bookstore. However, I had asked it to be kept aside because I had no space in my bike to take it back home. So last Thursday I went there to pick it up and there was a minor panic as the book could not be traced for sometime. I felt disappointed when the person told me the books are kept only for a week or so. But later, I heaved a sigh of relief when he finally took it from somewhere inside a shelf. I was surprised I got a real bargain in this hardcover book and got a pleasant shock on finding it was a first edition. Or maybe that was the one and only edition.

The book has thirty five pieces from various Indian writers including RK Narayan, Anita Desai, Vikram Seth and also GV Desani whose 'All About H Hatterr' I've been dying to read. There's an excerpt from it though, in this anthology. I felt sort of illiterate when I saw that I haven't read a single book listed in it except perhaps Manto's story, 'Toba Tek Singh'. I had missed buying Sara Suleri's 'Meatless Days' that was available at Abids for twenty rupees six months ago.

It was in the introduction to this Anthology that Salman Rushdie managed to create a furore. He had written that the work of those Indians writing in English (in a fifty year period) proved to be a stronger and more important work than that of the vernacular writers. Of course I don't agree but that's Rushdie for you. The works featured in this anthology cover a fifty year period, beginning from Independence in 1947 right upto 1997. This book needs a whole post for it so I will write about it again in another post.