The Sunday Haul

Only in Hyderabad can anyone think of such a thing. On Sunday morning I read about a book launch to be held at ten in the morning! It was the launch of a Telugu translation of ‘October Coup’ by Mohammed Hyder. Since it had been quite a long time since I had attended a book event so early in the day I decided to go. Another reason I wanted to go there was that the venue (Andhra Saraswat Parishat) was on the way to Abids. As expected, and in true Hyderabadi style, the event began a good three quarters of an hour after the official time. However I did not mind it a bit because the gathering was most interesting. There were people of that forgotten era, that gracious old world Hyderabadis, of the time of the Nizams. There were very senior citizens but very alert and active, walking in for the event organized by Hyderabad Book Trust and Anveshi, an NGO. I felt like I was in the midst of a gathering of those people who had witnessed a lot of history.
I bought a copy of ‘October Coup’ and read that it was a different version of the story of Hyderabad’s liberation, written from the view point of someone who was not from the ruling family or from the Indian side. It was by a bureaucrat of the Hyderabad Civil Service, Mohammed Hyder, who was the Collector of Osmanabad district. It seemed like an interesting memoir about how things came to being in those times when the Nizam ruled Hyderabad state was coerced into joining the Indian state. Unfortunately I could not stay for the panel discussion by some prominent journalists and other Hyderabadis because I had friends waiting at Abids. I left reluctantly since the discussion promised to throw up a lot of interesting facts about that time around 1948.

At Abids we began the hunt after our usual cup of tea at the Irani. It was damn hot but we went in like intrepid hunters intent on snagging something good. Shortly after we stepped into the bazaar I found Jean Rhys’ ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ and the Penguin edition I found was okay though filled with a lot of scribbling. The guy wrote his name and the title of the book in pen wherever there was some space. I bought it since it was pretty neat copy other than the pen scribbles. I got it for just twenty bucks and later I discovered that it was a minor classic. It seems one has to read ‘Jane Eyre’ to get the story which means there’s another classic I have to read.
The second find of Sunday was yet another copy of Somerset Maugham’s ‘Summing Up’ that I got for only twenty rupees. I already possess a couple of copies of this title but the copy I found on Sunday had a foreword by Glenway Wescott that I wanted to read. It is a book I give to people who tell me they want to be writers but have no idea how to go about it. After I’ve read this book a long time back and reread it almost every year I have a pretty decent idea of what good writing entails. I feel it is a book that everyone who has a desire to write must read at least once to understand something about writing and writers.


There are a few titles on my list I believed I’d not ever find anywhere, least of all in Hyderabad. Some such titles were WG Sebald’s ‘Rings of Saturn’; Freya Stark’s ‘The Southern Gates of Arabia’ ; Joan Didion’s ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’; Diana Athill’s ‘Stet’; Anne Fadiman’s ‘Ex-Libris’; Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Big Sleep’ and other books. Incredibly enough I’ve found these titles in second hand bookstores in Hyderabad and at Abids on Sundays. But one title on my list I did not ever expect to find. Unlike other titles I did not even remotely fantasize about finding it and also reading it. I simply added it to my list of good books and left it at that. Last Tuesday I dropped in at the MR Bookstore at Begumpet. I had visited their branch at Punjagutta where I was told there was new stock had arrived at the Begumpet store. On Tuesday I went there and found truck loads of books. I looked at the titles patiently and saw only multiple copies of books by Bernard Schlink (The Reader) James Patterson, Maeve Binchy, Catherine Cookson, Nora Roberts and others but not one title that interested me. Then suddenly my eyes hit on a title that sounded unusual. It was ‘The Blind Rider’ by Juan Goytisolo, that one title on my list I least expected to find! I was overjoyed at this serendipitous discovery and gladly paid the hundred rupees it was worth.
When I looked inside the book I was surprised to discover that the book was published in 2003, just ten years ago, originally in Spanish. The English translation came out in 2005. I was under the impression that it was a book published a long back, sometime in the fifties or earlier. Anyway when I read the blurbs on the back cover saying Goytisolo was one of the greatest living Spanish novelists I was glad the book came my way on Tuesday. Now I have another great writer whose other books I have to look out for. But I do not think I will find any of his other books in Hyderabad or anywhere in the country. I was just too damn lucky to find this copy.