On the first day of landing at Bengaluru there was a function connected with the marriage I had come for. It was a ladies-only event so I announced my plan to go to MG Road. Before anyone got second thoughts about our plan I sped away with the kid in an auto to MG Road. We got there by noon. I was eager to show my son, the wonder that was Blossom Book Store with its thousands of books. Before we went there we stopped at Indian Coffee House for snacks and coffee. In less than five minutes after entering BBS my son managed to locate more than a dozen comics he absolutely wanted to buy. On the other hand I could lay my hands on only three books. But they were all gems. The first book I picked up was another Chinua Achebe title- ‘Things Fall Apart’ that was a beautiful Penguin edition. The second was Graham Greene’s ‘Journey Without Maps’ that I had been looking for since a long time. The final find was a book that I had been looking for since I last saw and partly read at Port Blair way back in 2006. It was Madhusree Mukerjee’s ‘The Land of Naked People’ and the copy I found was a beautiful hardcover copy unlike the paperback I had seen earlier. With these three books in hand and the more than a dozen comics too we left for the next destination which was ‘Select’ a few steps away from Blossoms.
During my last visit to Select I found Kapuscinski’s ‘Travels with Herodotus’ and ‘Colours of Evil’ by Ashokamitran. I wondered what I would find this time. It did not take very long to take a quick look at all the titles in that small store. I found Raymond Chandler’s ‘Pearls are a Nuisance’ and got it for only eighty rupees. There was nothing else worth buying though if I had time I am sure I would have dug up something to take home. I had only half hour left to reach the venue of the marriage and before that I had another bookstore to check out. I hurried out and rushed to ‘Bookworm’ where I hoped I would find something really good like the last time when I found Dashiel Hammett’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’.
My friend Uma had praised ‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’Brien and had also said that we wouldn’t find it ever at Abids. Maybe not at Abids but I was confident I would find a copy in a second hand bookstore. I did not know that I would come across a copy in Bengaluru, albeit at a second hand store. Since I had very little time I simply glanced at the stack of books from the ground up and my eyes caught the title ‘The Things They Carried’ and after I had it taken out I realized it was the book Uma was mentioning. Excited, I sent him a message and later I learnt that he already had a copy that he had ordered online.
It was another big haul and after these eight books I found at Dehradun and Bengaluru within a week, the tally of books I picked up so far this year has crossed hundred. On the other hand, I haven’t even read half that number of books till date. So far I have read only forty two books this year. There’s still the Best Books sale coming up next month and later in December, the Hyderabad Book Fair where I am sure I will find more titles. Of course there are about twenty Sundays left. Whatever, I do not want to buy too many books and instead I want to read whatever I can.
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