I wouldn’t mind if I was told Abids would be the only place where I would be allowed to buy books. At Abids there are so many books that every Sunday I keep finding new writers. Last Sunday I came across a book by another writer whose name I faintly remember reading somewhere. The writer was Andre Brink and the book was ‘Imaginings of Sand’ that I got for fifty rupees.
The next find was not a book but the July-September 2014 issue of IQ (The Indian Quarterly) a classy magazine brought by the Mahindras that I hadn’t seen before. It was a thick, large magazine with high quality, glossy paper. Even the articles and photographs appeared high quality. I read a fantastic poem about poets titled ‘Bardic Stuff’ by Manohar Shetty. The essay by Amitava Kumar on writer Akhil Sharma (Family Life) was very good. I wonder why on earth this magazine is not available in Hyderabad. By the way, its price is 200 but I got it for thirty rupees at Abids. I wish I could find an older issue that was on writing.
Another find was ‘Show Me A Hero’ by Aditya Sudarshan. Aditya Sudarshan is a young writer who has attracted a lot of attention with his elegant writing. I’ve read two of the three novels he has written so far- The Persecution of Madhav Tripathi’ which is his latest novel and ‘A Nice Quiet Holiday’ which is his first novel. I had been looking for his second novel and finally I found it at Abids last Sunday. Incidentally, it was an article by Aditya Sudarshan in The Hindu’s “The Literary Review’ that I learnt about Arun Joshi and his novels.
On the way home, I stopped at the seller near RTC Cross Roads. The building at the corner was being demolished to make way for the Metro but the seller displayed his books amidst the rubble. I found a decent copy of ‘Aspects of the Novel’ by EM Forster. I already have two copies of this book at home but this copy looked better than the ones I had. Moreover, it was in a twenty-rupee heap so I picked it up without a second thought.
3 comments:
Arun Joshi was quite a find, I must say. Thanks to you.
In turn I must thank Aditya Sudarshan. But for his article in The Hindu I too wouldn't have known abut Arun Joshi.
Show me a hero - looks interesting.
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