It is damn hot in Hyderabad with the temperature shooting up to forty degrees and above. I’ve no idea if it is normal temperature for this time of the year but it sure indicates that the days ahead are going to be hotter. Somehow I can tolerate heat better than I can tolerate cold. I don’t mind sweating it out a bit. It is hot enough in my office to wish for air conditioners but the best we get is a ceiling fan though there are places which are air-conditioned. Coincidentally, with the sort of weather we’re having I am reading ‘Desert Solitaire’, an account of the author, Edward Abbey, who opts to stay alone in a National Park in the US where it is like a desert.
Though it wasn’t very hot on Sunday, I went to Abids along with my friend (Uma Shankar) looking for books. We found Raymond Carver’s ‘Fires’ in a heap of books selling for ten bucks, Annie Proulx’s collection of short stories- ‘Close Range’, Len Deighton’s ‘Billion Dollar Brain’, a beautiful, brand new copy of JD Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and finally Irving Wallace’s ‘The Writing of One Novel’ which he picked up. I have copies of all these books so I insisted he buy them for himself. On my part I picked up a book, a sort of travelogue, ‘Going to Extremes’ by Joe McGinniss which is an account of his two year stay in cold and remote Alaska. It seemed just the book to read in this weather. I plan to begin it immediately after finishing ‘Desert Solitaire.’
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