The Sunday Haul

The Sunday before, I had stupidly decided not to pick up a copy of Vilas Sarang’s ‘The Women in Cages’ that was on the pavements with one of the sellers. It was a Penguin and though I was aware that it would be a good book I did not buy it. Then later in the evening I began to regret not buying it and promised to buy it if I find it again at the same place. Luckily, last Sunday the book was still there. I noticed that it wasn’t in a good condition and that there was some damage on the bottom of the book where some of the pages seemed to have been eaten by termites. But it had all the pages intact otherwise so I took it for a hundred rupees.

‘The Women in Cages’ has twenty six stories under five different categories. Some of the stories are: An Evening at the Beach, An Afternoon Among the Rocks, Musk Deer, An Excursion, On the Stone Steps, A Revolt of the Gods, The Missing Link, The Women in Cages, The Odour of Immortality, Om Phallus, An Interview with M.Chakko, Barrel and Bombil: A Love Story, Flies, Spider in the Cock, Rabbit, The End of History, Testimony of An Indian Vulture, Return, Kalluri’s Escapade, The Terrorist, A Tale of Two Generals, Tree of Death, The Phonemate, Letters from Nikhil, The Life and Death of Manu, and The Departure.

Since a long time I had been meaning to read a Telugu novel called ‘Chillara Devullu’ written by Daasarathi Rangacharya but I was unable to find it at Abids. ‘Asamarthuni Jeevayatra’ by Tripuraneni Gopichand is another Telugu novel that I want to read. I want to read the original Telugu versions which I am somehow unable to find anywhere. Last Sunday at Abids I found a wonderful book called ‘Telugu Novel’ by an organization called ‘Yuva Bharathi’ that had essays in English on a few well known Telugu novels. Apart from ‘Chillara Devullu’ and ‘Asamarthuni Jeevayatra’ there were critical essays on more than ten novels including ‘Veyi Padagalu.’ I plan to read these essays first and decide which other novels I have to read. I got this book for just twenty rupees but it is an invaluable find.