Friday Double Post-1: The Sunday Haul

On other days of the week I wonder why I am still living in Hyderabad where more than half the population is bent on making life miserable for the other half by spitting and committing other uncivilized acts in the open. But on Sundays, especially when I am at Abids, I am glad I live in Hyderabad for a reason that has nothing to do with biryani and Irani chai. It isn’t that one can find books cheap at Abids, for as cheap as ten rupees, but the fact that one can get really good books very, very cheap. My recent haul of really fantastic books at Abids like Woody Allen’s ‘Without Feathers’ Manto’s ‘Black Margins’ Diana Athill’s ‘Stet’, Maugham’s ‘Razor’s Edge’ and so many other books too numerous to list here, is testimony of the kind of haul a serious book lover can make at Abids on Sundays.

Last Sunday I had yet another good haul. I am serious fan of John Le Carre and Len Deighton. Deighton’s Bernard Samson and Le Carre’s George Smiley are two of my favorite charecters. Though I possess many titles of Len Deighton, I cannot say the same about Le Carre though I have read all his books. On Sunday I found not one or two but three titles by Le Carre- The Honorable School Boy, The Perfect Spy and Smiley’s People- in a heap of books selling for thirty rupees each. The interesting thing was that these titles were hardcover copies with jacket and appeared almost new. ‘The Honorable Schoolboy’ and ‘Smiley’s People’ were Borzoi editions by Alfred A. Knopf while ‘The Perfect Spy’ was by Viking. I also found yet another copy of Elmore Leonard’s ‘Freaky Deaky’ which was also a hardcover copy. The funny thing was that this heap of books belongs to the Best Books guys and they have a pretty good idea about good books and their prices. The other day I had been to their store in Lakdi Ka Pul where I happened to see paperback copies of ‘Freaky Deaky’ priced at Rs. 70 whereas I got the hardcover copy on the pavement at Abids for just thirty rupees. Either these guys are dumb or I’m very lucky.

The fourth find of the day was a book that was actually the first book I had picked up last Sunday at Abids. I found UR Ananthamurthy’s ‘Samskara’ translated by AK Ramanujam. Now ‘Samskara’ happens to be a book that pops up in every discussion about Indian language writing. So in keeping with my resolve of reading books by Indian writers I added this book to my haul. It was a pretty good copy and I got it for only twenty rupees. Maybe the seller thought because it was a small book with less than two hundred pages it couldn’t have been worth more than twenty rupees. One of these days I am going to devote an entire month to read only Indian writers and I have a long list of their books I have yet to begin reading.