Sunday Super Haul

A couple of times in the past there have been days when all I found were books, books and only books. I remember a day in the late 90’s when I returned from Abids with about a dozen books in hand. More recently I found half a dozen good books all at Abids. Last Sunday also my life was flooded with books,six books in all - two at Abids, three given by Hari and one that I found at a book store.

Sunday morning turned out to be a pleasant one, mildly sunny and permeated with a festive atmosphere because of Sankranthi. We (me, Uma and Shrikant) gathered at our usual Irani for a cup of chai and talk about books before setting out to find more books as if we do not have enough already. After nearly two hours of browsing I picked up only one book- Scott M. Peck’s ‘The Road Less Travelled’ that I have decided to read this year after coming across it too often in several places. However, the second find was at Chikkadpalli while I was returning home. At one of the sellers in Chikkadpally I saw ‘Problems and Other Stories’ by John Updike. The book was in good condition and has twenty three stories- Commercial, Minutes of the Last Meeting, The Gun Shop, How to Love America and Leave It at the Same Time, Nevada, Son, Daughter, Last Glimpses of Ethiopia, Transaction, Separating, Agustine’s Concubine, The Man Who Loved Extinct Mammals, Problems, Domestic Life in America, Love Song, for a Moog Synthesizer, From the Journal of a Leper, Here Come the Maples, The Fairy Godfathers, The Faint, The Egg Race, Guilt Gems, and Atlantises. But the book did not come cheap. I paid fifty rupees which I think is worth it.

In the evening I met Hari at Minerva for coffee and a long overdue chat. He gave me two books on writing that were once the property of our common friend J.R. Jyoti, an indefatigable writer and a gentlemen who passed away sometime back. His son Sunil Jyoti kindly let us have dozens of writing books and magazines that formed a minuscule part of the thousands of books owned by Jyoti sir. While Hari went for the books on writing I picked up old issues of Writer’s Digest. Afterwards we ambled to Landmark where there was an offer of three books for the price of two. Hari wanted to buy titles that he wanted to read and made use of the offer by buying two books for himself and the third for me which was quite generous of him considering the fact that the price was Rs 299. That was how I got Saul Bellow’s ‘Collected Stories’ as my fifth book of the day. ‘Collected Stories’ has thirteen stories- By the St. Lawrence, A Silver Dish, The Bellarosa Connection, The Old System, A Theft, Looking for Mr. Green, Cousins, Zetland, By a Character Witness, Leaving the Yellow House, What Kind of Day Did You Have/, Mosby’s Memoirs, Him with His Foot in His Mouth, Something to Remember Me By.

Later I happened to drop in at Himalaya Book Stores near the Punjagutta flyover to buy a Mathematics textbook for my son. I happened to notice a collection of books on a shelf that were for sale at a discount. Nestled in the middle of a stack at the bottom of the shelf was Robert. B. Parker’s ‘Small Vices’ that I pulled out eagerly. I was glad to see that it was a Spenser title and was a hardcover edition though not in pristine condition. The jacket was torn but otherwise it was okay. I was in a dilemma for a second- to buy it or not because after discount the price came to Rs 180. Needless to say, I bought it.