The Final Sunday's Haul

At Abids, the surprises seem to be getting better. Last Sunday I got lucky finding the latest issue of a magazine I love to read- Conde Nast Traveller. I was there at Abids on the twenty eighth of December but I got quite a turn when I spotted the January 2009 issue of Conde Nast Traveller Magazine on the pavement. I don’t want to blame whoever gave it away because I was lucky getting it for only thirty bucks. At Walden or Odyssey the same issue would have set me back by at least six hundred bucks not that I would want to buy it there. Apart from this magazine I found one more magazine and a book which I swore would be the last book I would pick up for sometime.

Actually the first find of Sunday was a book- Edward Abbey’s ‘Desert Solitaire’, which is about the time the author spent all alone as a ranger in a National Park in the US- the Arches National Monument in Utah. Sometimes I fantasize doing things like that. When I was in the Andamans I wondered how it would be to spend sometime alone on an uninhabited island but, fortunately or unfortunately, I left before I could put that idea into action. The first line in ‘Desert Solitaire’ reads: ‘This is the most beautiful place on earth.’ The book promises to be an interesting read.

The second find was a magazine- the October 2008 issue of ‘National Geographic Traveler’ that I got for twenty rupees. Inside there was an article by someone called Monica Bhide on Mumbai and the Taj was featured in it. I wonder what they must be thinking now after all the bombings in the hotel and the shootings in the city. I guess they must have carried some kind of follow up story but I will never know unless I happen to come across the latest issue.

Conde Nast Traveller too in its January 2009 issue carried a short feature about the best hotels in Mumbai and needless to say, the Taj was listed. I am surprised that they did not mention that the hotel was almost completely burnt down recently. I wonder what it would have to say if someone who read the article in the magazine decided to book a room at the hotel? Maybe the magazine will carry some kind of correction in its next issue.

The same evening I was traveling to Visakhapatnam by train and despite my resolve not to pick up any books I couldn’t resist going to Abids in the morning since it was the last Sunday of the year. I did not want to end the year that way so I had gone. Strangely enough, the entire haul of magazines and the book I found on Sunday were about traveling- the very thing I was doing.