During a long stay at Dehradun in June this year I had discovered a book sale very near to the hotel where I stayed for almost two weeks. I made a couple of visits to the Max Book Sale and managed to find a few good books. One of the best hauls there was Ryszard Kapuscinski’s ‘The Shadow of the Sun’ that I am currently reading. I also bought Jean Rhys’ ‘Tigers are Better Looking’ and Tobias Wolff’s ‘In Pharaoh’s Army’ at the sale. I saw Elmore Leonard’s ‘Djibouti’ but did not buy it. I knew I cannot find it anywhere but still I did not pick it up since I had bought too many books by then.
I was in Dehradun again sometime last week and was pleasantly surprised to find that the Max Book Sale was still on. Earlier it was in the ground floor of a building under construction and now it had shifted to the upper floor of the building. I told the person with me that I would look around in the sale for about an hour and then went in. The first find was a beautiful copy of Peter Matthiessen’s ‘The Snow Leopard’ that I got for a hundred and fifty rupees. The other find was VS Naipaul’s ‘An Area of Darkness’ that was in good condition. I already have this book but the reason why I picked up the book was that it was in a stack of books selling for only thirty rupees.
The third book I picked up was Walter Mosley’s ‘Fearless Jones’ that I bought since I would have about three hours to kill at the airport in Delhi between my flights. I got this book too for only thirty rupees. But I was not able to find the copy of ‘Djibouti’ by Elmore Leonard however hard I looked. It was the only disappointment of the trip.
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