Hardly had I recovered after finishing Anthony Bourdain’s ‘The Nasty Bits’, a delightful collection of essays, articles on food, restaurants, cities and chefs, than I stumbled on another similar book. After reading ‘The Nasty Bits’ I had ideas of my own to put aside the pen and pick up a pan to try dishing out a different fare from what I am serving here. Apart from that aberrant thought I had also thought (and still think) that there’s no one better than Bourdain to write so passionately about food. As always, I couldn’t think of any Indian writer who could write on food in that manner. Not very soon I had to change my mind after finding Vir Sanghvi’s ‘Rude Food’ at Abids last Sunday.
Not being much of a television watcher I once or twice saw Vir Sanghvi on Travel & Living channel but did not pay much attention to what the programme was about. I know Vir Sangvi better as a serious political columnist who writes with great insight on current issues. What I really did not know that at the age of twenty two he created history in Indian journalism circles by becoming the youngest editor to edit a magazine. At that age I was still struggling to piece together sentences but couldn’t get beyond writing stuff which even I could barely understand. Anyway, only a fortnight ago I had read his column somewhere and was mighty impressed enough to wish we could get Hindustan Times in Hyderabad.
What I did not know was that he is a dedicated lover of good food and has done so much of food writing that Penguin has decided to come out with ‘Rude Food’, a book of his columns or as the book says ‘the collected food writings of VS.’ When Uma pointed out the book to me at Abids I was eager to savor (pun intended) the writing but hesitated to buy it. The copy I found not only had pages that had moisture stains but there was enough mold on such pages that would take days to be scraped off. After calculating the chances (none) of finding a decent copy of the book at Abids I went ahead and bought the book for fifty rupees.
The second find of Sunday was a book by another author I wished I had read more of- Nikos Kazantzakis and the book I found was ‘Report to Greco.’ It was a writer’s autobiography, something that I can rarely resist buying however many pages it has. ‘Report to Greco’ is more than five hundred pages long and I wonder why of late I am picking up books on food and also books that are more than four hundred pages in length. So the book too ended up a part of the haul on Sunday. While reading through the introduction I came across the interesting information that Jawaharlal Nehru had invited Kazantzakis to visit India. He didn’t, by the way.
But the best find of the day was Herman Raucher’s ‘Summer of 42’ that ranks as one of my favorite books. I already have two copies of the book and last Sunday I couldn’t resist buying another not because it had a brand new look to it, not because the price was only twenty rupees but because of something, a feeling the book produces that I am not able to put into words here. It has some wonderfully zany humor of the adolescent kind and is also very poignant especially at the end. I do not hesitate to recommend ‘Summer of 42’ along with Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’ to young people who ask me about good books to read.
Three good books and a long, long talk with Uma over chai about books, writing and writers was what made the day last Sunday which is one reason why I look forward to Sundays. When one works for the government it is such small pleasures that make the boredom tolerable.
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