THE SUNDAY HAUL

The Abids second hand book bazaar that comes up on Sundays is a pretty open affair in the sense that everything is in the open- the books, the sellers, and also the buyers. It is, literally, a bazaar on the pavement. The sellers display and sell their books on the pavements before shops that are closed for Sunday. Being in the open it means exposure to the sun, which can get pretty merciless in the summer. In the monsoon the unpredictable rains play spoilsport to the book hunting experience. The books get drenched in the rain which, in my opinion, worse than getting drenched oneself. That leaves only one season when it is pure bliss to haunt the Abids book bazaar- Winter.

I hadn’t realized it was already winter in Hyderabad until last Sunday when a mild winter sun came out. It felt pleasantly warm as I discussed the Literary Review in The Hindu over a cup of Iran chai with Uma Shanker. There was news about the Lit for Life event at Chennai and the Fiction Prize going to Rahul Bhattacharya for ‘The Sly Company of People Who Care’ that I now want to read very soon. After the tea we went out for the hunt among the piles of books.

There was a seller who had new stock of almost brand new copies of Penguin titles of Indian authors. There were a lot of books that I wanted to pick up but the seller was someone who doesn’t reduce the prices to the levels I want. But Uma Shanker and Srinath picked up each a title of Marquez. I saw Ashokamitran’s ‘Mansarovar’ that I might look at again and buy next week if it still around. Next we went to another seller and looked in another pile that we’ve been rifling through since weeks and came up with two books.

The first find was a tattered copy of ‘An Expensive Place to Die’ by Len Deighton who happens to be one of my favourite writers. The second find was ‘A Nice Quiet Holiday’ by Aditya Sudarshan who writes interesting articles in The Literary Review supplement of The Hindu. I have already begun to read the book right after coming out of a daze induced by reading Anjum Hasan’s ‘Lunatic in My Head.’ The style of writing made me want to read her next novel ‘Neti, Neti’ that I hope I can find soon.