The Sunday Haul

If the weather outdoors on Sunday was anything to go by then Hyderabad is in for a torrid summer in the months ahead. It was unbearably warm quite early in the day, at about eleven in the morning when we set out for the weekly hunt for books on the pavements of Abids. I made a mental note to bring along a cap and a bottle of water to Abids in the coming Sundays. However, if the weather was not good then the haul I landed was quite good, in fact, better than any haul this year. I found four books- three by Indian writers and one by a writer on writing.

Even before I got to Abids, at Chikkadpally at one of the sellers, I found ‘The Saratchandra Omnibus, Volume-I’ containing five novels of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay: Srikanta (translated by Aruna Chakravarti), Devdas (Translated by Sreejata Guha), Palli Samaj (Tr by Malobika Chaudhuri) and Nishkriti ( tr by Malobika Chaudhuri). Naturally, it was a big tome running into 738 pages but I got to pay only fifty rupees for it. It was a lucky beginning to my Sunday book hunt.

The second find was another book by an Indian writer. I found a nice copy of Anita Desai’s ‘Baumgartner’s Bombay’ which I picked up immediately after spotting it. Luckily, I got this book too quite cheap- forty rupees. The book was in a good condition and the fact that it was a Penguin edition added to my joy of finding it. I had read a collection of her short stories but I haven’t had the opportunity to read a full length novel by Anita Desai so far. I want to begin with ‘Baumgartner’s Bombay’ that I plan to start reading in the coming days.

Only last week I had found Quarratulain Hyder’s ‘Fireflies in the Mist’ at a second hand bookstore in Begumpet and I got a pleasant surprise when I saw ‘The Street Singers of Lucknow and Other Stories’ a collection of short stories by her. This book has the following eight short stories: The Street Singers of Lucknow, The Story of Catherine Bolton, Confessions of St. Flora of Georgia, The Guest House, Beyond the Speed of Light, A Night on Pali Hill, Hyena’s Laughter and The Missing Photograph.

At the last moment, minutes before we were leaving Abids I spotted Natalie Goldberg’s ‘Wild Mind’ and saw that it was a better copy than the one I had found long back. This is another book of hers on writing, the first one being the famous title ‘Writing Down the Bones’ that I have. Though I already have a copy of ‘Wild Mind’ I bought the copy I found at Abids. It came pretty cheap at fifty rupees.