The Haul

It took a full year to pass before I learnt that there was a library in the premises of the Secretariat. Sometime last week I located the library and checked it out. It was quite a sizeable one with a room for periodicals and another couple of rooms filled with books. The periodical section was open only for an hour during the lunch hour every day. I thought of checking out the books some other day but forgot all about it. But a week ago when I saw a notice about a two day book exhibition on occasion of the Library Week, stuck on the notice board I decided to drop in on the second day. There was a small crowd checking out the books displayed. There weren’t any titles interesting enough for me to pick up but I nevertheless bought a book. It was a Telugu novel.

It might come as a surprise to all but the very first book I read when I was a school kid was a Telugu book. It was also the first time I ever visited a library back in Nizamabad where I spent a considerable part of my childhood. However, afterwards I switched over to English books but I haven’t stopped reading Telugu newspapers and other material. Though born a Maharashtrian, I studied Hindi and Telugu at school. I am surrounded by Telugu speaking people all the time and also sometimes at work I have to read and write Telugu which I do fairly well. It is another thing that I cannot either read or write in my mother tongue, which is Marathi. However, I have never read a full length Telugu novel so far and since a long time I have harboured a desire to read Telugu classics. I have planned to read Gurujada Appa Rao’s ‘Kanyashulkam’, Sri Sri’s works like ‘Mahaprasthanam’, and other classics in the original language. At the book exhibition in the Secretariat I picked up a Telugu novel that I had read about- ‘Balipeetam’ by Ranganayakamma.

The copy of ‘Balipeetam’ by Ranganayakamma that I bought was a beautifully bound copy with a colourful cover. I got the book for only sixty rupees. I plan to start reading it right away and have the satisfaction of having read at least one Telugu novel in 2011. The book is fairly lengthy and though I cannot read Telugu as fast as English I hope to complete it by the end of the year.

On Sunday I was at a funeral and hence couldn’t go to Abids for my weekly book hunt. Since the past two weeks several distressing occurrences have put me under a cloud. I needed some kind of relief and when I read the newspapers on Tuesday I found it. I read in Tuesday’s ‘Metro Plus’ supplement that Sidin Vadukut’s ‘God Save the Dork’, the second book in the Dork trilogy, was out I decided to buy it. I had found his first book very hilarious and had been waiting for this second book. The same day I went to Landmark at Somajiguda with Hari and picked it up. I plan to begin reading it after I finish ‘A Nice Quiet Holiday’ that I am reading now.