The Sunday Haul (on 20-09-2015)

Unlike the previous Sunday when I had the pleasant company of Jai and his family last Sunday I was absolutely alone. Though my friends could not make it Abids Jai dropped in with his small family. Before bursting on the scene to look for books on the pavements we sat in the Taj Mahal and had coffee. Jai gave me a Deccan pen in exchange for the copy of Stephen Fry’s ‘Paperweight’ that I gave him. Later, while looking for the books, and after watching the earnest and eager face of Mamun, Jai’s sweet little daughter, while she picked up her own books I was convinced another book lover was in the making. I hope Jai brings her to Abids regularly so she can find more books to read.

Since I was alone last Sunday I enjoyed every moment of it keenly looking for titles to pick up without being distracted. In a heap of books selling for thirty rupees I saw a nice copy of ‘London Fields’ by Martin Amis that I had seen earlier at the same place. I had not felt like picking up then but last Sunday I realized it would be a dumb idea to leave it behind. This was the first find.

I am currently half way through ‘Poor but Spirited in Karimnagar’ by Sumita Dawra, an IAS officer, that is about her experiences as the Collector of Karimnagar. At Abids when I chanced upon another such book by an IAS officer I thought it would be a good idea to pick it up and read it to see what the retired bureaucrat had to say. So I picked up ‘Walking with Giants’ by G. Ramachandran. I got it for forty rupees.

I haven’t read any title by Terry Pratchett who was in the news recently after his death. I am not really into sci-fi or fantasy but when I saw a nice copy of ‘Carpe Jugulum’ by Terry Pratchett I bought it. It would be my first Terry Pratchett title and I hope it would be an interesting read.

Later at Chikkadpally I found another delightful collection of short stories published by Sahitya Akademi. I found ‘Contemporary Short Stories’ Series-1 that had a total of fifteen short stories translated into English from various regional languages. This collection had the following stories:
BHADARI (Assamese) by Laxminath Bezboroa
THE PRICE OF FLOWERS (Bengali) by Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay
A MOMENT OF ETERNITY (English) by Bhabani Bhattacharya
THE LETTER (Gujarati) by ‘Dhumketu’
THE CHILD (Hindi) by Premchand
THE CURDS-SELLER (Kannada) by Masti Venkata Iyengar
THE BRIDE’S PYJAMAS (Kashmiri) by Akhtar Mohi-ud-din
THE TALKING PLOUGH (Malayalam) by Ponkunnam Varkey
MANU (Marathi) by Roop Kattnak
ONLY A DOG (Oriya) by Kalindi Charan Panigrahi
MIRACLE (Punjabi) by Kartar Singh Duggal
BROTHER ABDUL RAHMAN (Sindhi) by Amarlal Hingorani
THE NOSE JEWEL (Tamil) by C. Rajagopalachari
ON THE BOAT (Telugu) by P.Padmaraju
TINNY’S GRANNY (Urdu) by Ismat Chugtai