THE SUNDAY HAUL

Normally I do no find anything I read in ‘The Hindu’ that makes me go to the extent of dashing off a letter to the editor protesting against the inaccuracies. Last week however there were two occasions though I haven’t written to the editor. One concerned an item about an official report about the drought in the state that I was personally involved in preparing which ‘The Hindu’ got completely wrong. The other was a feature in ‘Downtown’ supplement on Sunday which had the headline- ‘Sunday Book Market Loses Its Sheen.’ For the first time in my life I thought of writing to the editor to let him know how wrong the report was but felt the blog was a better place to write about it.

I usually like the thoroughness with which Asif Yar Khan (who did the report) does his reporting. He manages to cover even minor things but on this occasion he seems to have got it wrong. Anyone who is a regular at the Abids book bazaar on Sundays knows the bazaar is thriving with thousands of visitors thronging the place every Sunday to pick up books. Though the number of sellers may have gone down slightly there is no decrease in the number of books. Not many have an idea of the kind of treasures that one can find at Abids. Last week, I had another occasion for such an experience.

Sometime last month I had come across a list of books that were ‘out of print’ and for which people were ready to pay hundreds of dollars for. One of the books was Kyle Onstott’s ‘Mandingo’ that sounded familiar. I remembered seeing it at Abids. I was intrigued to read that a new copy of ‘Mandingo’ would fetch nearly three hundred dollars. I somehow knew I would find it some day. I was certain of it because I had seen the book on the pavements at Abids not very long ago. Last Sunday I found ‘Mandingo.’ I wasn’t looking for it for the money but for the thrill of tracking down something I believed I’d come across sooner or later.

Since about a month I’d been discussing the list of out of print books with Uma Shanker. Apart from “Mandingo’ the list featured Stephen King’s ‘Rage’ and ‘Pretty Pony,’ ‘Promise Me Tomorrow’ by Nora Roberts and other books I had not read about. I told him I had seen Mandingo and secretly wished I could find it if only to prove that I wasn’t boasting. Coincidentally, Uma Shanker was with me when I chanced upon ‘Mandingo’ and got it for just fifty rupees. I have no idea how much that copy might fetch but I do not have any plans to part with it.

However, ‘Mandingo’ wasn’t the first find of Sunday. I got a good copy of Helen Dunmore’s ‘Love of Fat Men’ which is a collection of these nineteen short stories: Love of Fat Men, Batteries, Short Days Long Nights, The Bridge Painter, Ullikins, Paivi, etc. I read on the book that Helen Dunmore is a winner of the Orange Prize. I got the book for only twenty rupees.

But the real find of the Sunday was the collection of short stories of Ernest Hemingway ‘The First Forty Nine Stories’ which was in a good condition. The collection includes some of Hemingway’s famous stories llike The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Indian Camp, Hills Like White Elephants, The Killers, Ten Indians and a lot many other stories that I haven’t read like: The Capital of the World, Old Man at the Bridge, Up in Michigan, On the Quai at Smyrna, The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife and so on. All forty nine stories for just fifty rupees.

Now someone tell me where the sheen has gone.