The Sunday Haul- No Books But Many Tales

This was a Sunday I was eagerly waiting for several reasons. The last Sunday I was at the election training hence could visit Abids only for a short time late in the afternoon so I did not really feel like I had been to Abids. However I had picked up two good books last Sunday. The Sunday before that I had been to Basar so I missed Abids. Another reason was that it was the first Sunday of the month which meant that ‘The Hindu’ would be issuing ‘Literary Review’ along with the main paper.

The first thing on Sunday was the ‘Literary Review’ which, like last month, was two pages less. It looks like either recession had hit ‘The Hindu’ or they aren’t getting enough stuff to fill the pages, which is unlikely. Or perhaps what with the election fever on, they must have thought books weren’t such an important thing. Whatever it is, I hope they revert to six pages of LR. It just doesn’t feel complete even though only two pages are missing though LR is (or was) only eight pages.

The front page had a sort of interview of Pico Iyer and that was enough to set the tone of the day. Ziya us Salam, who used to review films for the same paper, seems to be an admirer of Pico Iyer for the piece reflected it. In it Pico Iyer says that ‘writers bring the world together’ and that ‘every piece of writing is inadvertent autobiography’ while explaining how he turned to writing from journalism. He talks about how he came to write the books he had written. The only disappointment I felt was reading that Pico Iyer was in India on a short visit and I wasn’t even aware of it.

Later on, at Abids though I reached early enough I couldn’t find anything interesting. Though I did not buy anything I was happy to spend a couple of hours at Abids, browsing. There was a magazine that I saw and felt like picking up- National Geographic Adventure- but did not. Then there was a book that sounded interesting, something about adapting books for movies but the guy quoted too steep a price so I did not take it too. So I returned empty handed from Abids. But there was another thing that brought on more than a tinge of disappointment- the closure of a favorite second hand book shop.

Until last month, MR Books, a seller of second hand books with three or more branches in the city, closed down its branch at Abids. It was very near to my office and there were many afternoons when I would walk down to the store to browse. If I picked up any book from there, I would sit in Bombay Bakery and Restaurant flipping through it while sipping Irani tea. I feel sad that the book store is no more. In its place is coming up, of all things, an eatery! The board I noticed was ‘Bowl O’ China’ which is the Chinese arm of ‘Hyderabad House’ which is one lousy eatery. I’ll tell you why.

Sometime last month I had been to the Hyderabad House branch at Nallakunta for dinner with a friend. It was a new branch and was quite spacious with an impressive list of items available on the menu. Though there were enough tables to seat at least thirty people only one table was occupied by a couple. So with mouth already watering we settled down for dinner. A young waiter appeared before us and told us that only chicken biryani was available and nothing else. Naturally, we were surprised but did not ask us why because we knew why.

Hyderabad House has a central kitchen somewhere in a far away corner of the city from where food is supplied to all its branches which recently have begun sprouting all over the city. We were terriblly disappointment. It wasn’t the first time I was disappointed in HH. The only saving grace was that at least the waiter appeared apologetic enough. We briefly thought of going to their other branch at Himayatnagar but instead we had dinner at a small Chinese eatery- Ryans- that I had read about in ‘Metro Plus’. Someday I am going to write about how it feels like to be the only customers in eateries.