Last Sunday it wasn’t the kind of day Sunday normally is for me. I had been asked to come to the office which put me in a resentful mood. I had just an hour or so to go to Abids and check out the books. I had seen a title the previous Sunday that I realized was a good one and when I wanted to pick it the seller did not turn up. I looked around and managed to find another cook book. It was ‘The Complete Indian Cookbook- from Kashmir to Kanyakumari’ by Vimla Patil that I got for fifty rupees.
Though the visit to Abids in the morning helped me overcome the disappointment of going to work on a Sunday it did not last long. I had thought I’d be able to leave the office by evening but I was in the office until midnight. The Chief Minister was going to New Delhi to meet the Prime Minister to appraise him about the drought in the State and since I was the only officer available it fell on me to prepare the notes. Though I managed to complete the notes the loss of a holiday put me in a bad mood all week until Thursday.
On Thursday I dropped in at the Best Books store at Lakdi-ka-pul since it had been quite a long time since I had checked in at the store. Sometime back at a sale of Best Books in February I found two copies of ‘The Cost of Living’ by Mavis Gallant. Somebody had told me not to miss any title by Mavis Gallant so I felt quite lucky finding ‘The Cost of Living.’ On Thursday I got lucky again and found another title ‘My Heart is Broken’ by Mavis Gallant. It was only for forty rupees and I felt glad I found the book. It is a collection of the following nine stories: Acceptance of Their Ways; Bernadette; The Moabitess: Its Image on the Mirror ( a short novel); The Cost of Living: My Heart is Broken; Sunday Afternoon: An Umarried Man’s Summe; and The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street.
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