The Book Fair Haul-I

For the first time in many years I missed the first day of the Hyderabad Book Fair. I was in Hyderabad but attending a meeting that went on until half past time which was the time the Book Fair closed. So I went the next day. I don’t know if it was the effect of the demonetisation or something else I wasn’t very excited about the Book Fair. And when I entered the fair I was even more depressed after looking around at the stalls. There were less than ten stalls selling second hand books and three fourths of them seemed to be of sellers who are at Abids. I could see only three stalls of second hand books that were from other places. Last year there were more than ten second hand book stalls put up by sellers from Mumbai, Ahmedabad and other places. I did not expect to find many good titles in these stalls but I was wrong. I managed to find a decent haul of five books on my first visit to the 30th Hyderabad National Book Fair.

In the second hand book stall put up by Prateek Books from Mumbai I found five good titles. I was looking for a good copy of ‘Cry, the Beloved Country’ by Alan Paton after I read his autobiography ‘Towards the Mountain’ recently. I saw a good copy of ‘Cry, the Beloved Country’ and picked it up. Next I saw a good copy of ‘The Pedant in the Kitchen’ by Julian Barnes. It seemed to be something about cooking and I just picked it up without a second thought because it was by Julian Barnes.

Sometimes one finds books from the collections of famous people if one buys only second hand books. Though I haven’t found any book from the collection of anyone famous I found a book at the Book Fair. The thing about being in a particular profession is that one collects books relating to that profession only. So when I saw a copy of ‘Jean Luc Godard’ from the library of Sunil Dutt and Nargis Dutt I wasn’t surprised. But I was surprised how the book came to be with a second hand book seller. I wonder how many such books were in that library and what had happened to the rest of the collection in the library. But I felt a bit of a thrill holding that book that the two famous actors Sunil and Nargis Dutt would have held in their hands.

The next book I found was also an interesting one. It had the name ‘VIJAY TENDULKAR’ written on one of the inside pages along with the date- 24th July 1982. I wonder if it belonged to the famous playwright or someone else with the same name. The book was a copy of ‘Paris Review Interviews: Writers at Work’ 2nd Series. It had interviews of fourteen famous writers: Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot, Boris Pasternak, Katherine Anne Porter, Henry Miller, Aldous Huxley, Ernest Hemingway, S.J.Perelman, Lawrence Durrell, Mary McCarthy, Ralph Ellison, and Robert Lowell. I have one in another series with a different set of writers that I had bought a long, long time back.

In another stall of second hand books set up by another outstation seller I found a copy of ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King. This is one title that I cannot resist buying whatever the cost. The copy I found was a Tenth Anniversary Edition by Scribner. The cover has a picture of Stephen King sitting in his study, writing while his pet dog looks from under his legs at the camera. I got this book for hundred rupees which I thought was a fair price.