The Sunday Haul

On one hand there is the satisfaction of having found and read books of some of the great travel writers like Pico Iyer, Paul Theroux, Peter Matthiessen, Ryszcard Kapuscinski, Jonathan Raban, Bruce Chatwin and others but what outweighs this satisfaction is the disappointment of not having yet read many other and equally great travel writers like Eric Newby, Wilfred Thesiger, Rory MacLean and also Jan Morris. A couple of years ago at Abids I had found something that was really a treasure- ‘Wanderlust’ of Salon.com edited by Don George. Among the forty one articles in it that I read one by one over a period of several weeks was one by Jan Morris titled ‘The Meaning of Gdansk’ after reading which an image from it stayed in my mind for a long time after. It was that of an old red and white model of a paddle streamer that Morris brought to Wales all the way from Gdansk. After reading the article I wanted to read more of this superb writer but it proved to be quite a long wait to find a book by Jan Morris. The wait ended last Sunday.

Owing to bad weather one Sunday and Diwali on another Sunday that followed I could not make it to Abids for my weekly book hunt. I was more than excited when I started out for Abids this Sunday hoping I’d find a good book at the end of the day. Within minutes of starting my hunt I came upon Jan Morris’ ‘Travels’ that I picked up without hesitation for fifty rupees. The hardcover book is worth more than what I paid for it. ‘Travels’ had eleven different articles on places like Singapore, Dublin, Edinburgh, Hong Kong, Washington D.C., and on people like Ibn Batuta. I read the article on Singapore ‘The City State’ and found it written in a different style. Jan Morris’ writing is a satisfying mix that combines the personal, the historical and the factual observations about places and people. The articles are not something that one can zip through like articles in travel magazines. They have to be read quite slowly in order to taken in the richness of the prose and the factual information. One may have to (at least people like me) read them again and again to fully comprehend what is written.