The Sunday Haul

This blog completes seven years. This is the first post of the eighth year of the blog.

With only two days to go for Ramzan, Abids on Sunday was a beehive of activity with hordes of shoppers thronging the shops that were kept open though it was a Sunday. Early in the morning on Sunday there was rain and I had almost dropped the idea of visiting Abids to look for books. But after a couple of hours the rain cleared out and I changed my mind since the Sunday wouldn’t be complete for me without the visit to Abids, without the half hour of chatting with my friends over chai in the café there. When I reached Abids I found that since the regular shops were open the pavement booksellers had set up shop in other vacant places.

Since my haul of books till date had crossed the century mark I was wary of buying any more books and I decided to buy only if the title was something I would never find again. Sometime back, maybe a year ago I found a copy of Judith Guest’s ‘Ordinary People’ that someone borrowed from me even before I could read and forgot to return it. When I saw another good copy with the seller who gives me the books at whatever price I ask for I decided to buy it. I got the book for thirty rupees.

At one place Uma pointed out a Graham Greene title lying on the pavement. I bought ‘It’s a Battlefield’ though I had to shell out sixty rupees for it. This was with a seller who doesn’t much encourage bargaining and sticks to the price he quotes. Both the books were in good condition and, coincidentally, both were Penguin titles.