Hanging Out at Odyssey

Recently, the day before in fact, I was at the Odyssey store at Jubilee Hills along with Hari. He had fixed to meet someone at the store so I tagged along to see what the Jubilee Hills types were up to. While we were inside CCD having coffee I saw a young and famous Tollywood director enter the store with a pretty young thing in tow. He was quite famous, having directed a movie that broke all records and earned him crores of moolah but nobody in the store paid any attention to him. The young lady was quite good looking but I thought she couldn’t be a Tollywood actress because she actually took out a book from the racks and read for a few minutes. (I know two three who read- Sonali Bendre, Sophie Choudry and Shriya Saran.)

Anyway, looking around the store I saw that a book I had spotted when the store was inaugurated almost a year ago, was still there in the same place I had seen it. It was Cartier’s ‘The Art of Writing’ which was all about Cartier fountain pens. It is a coffee table book that was expensive, something around five thousand or so I remember. I had found the same book in the book fair last year where I got it for just three hundred and fifty bucks. If the book still remains unsold I guess it shows that there aren’t many people in Hyderabad who love fountain pens and if there are, all of them might not have visited the store.

Another book I saw was Elmore Leonard’s ‘Cat Chaser’ that I briefly wondered whether to buy or not. Similar was the dilemma with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book of short stories. Now I feel that I should have picked up the book of short stories. In fact I would have picked up all those books if I had happened to make a pile like the Tollywood director did. One thing I noticed was that the sales assistants at Odyssey were quite helpful. You only had to look around helplessly before finding an eager and smiling feller before you asking how he could help you. Of course, those at the cash counter were even more polite, greeting you and actually smiling at you, something which I rarely see in other places.

Also by then I had bought the ‘Holiday Special’ issue of Tinkle, the May 2009 issue of ‘Tinkle’ and a sketch book for my kid so I was way over budget. I might drop in after pay day and if I find Marquez’s book of short stories, then it is mine. Assuming, of course, that none of this blog's Hyderabadi readers who love Marquez hare off to Odyssey and pick it up before I do!