Last Sunday was one of those not-so-rare Sundays when every title in the haul at Abids was a treasure. Usually, one or two titles in my average haul of 3-4 books happen to be outstanding titles but once in a while all the titles in the haul are truly good titles ( or titles that I think are good) that fill me with a lot of joy at finding them. On Sunday the haul at Abids consisted of three books and all of them were titles that one cannot find so easily and at such low prices. It was my second or third Sunday of the year when the entire haul was a treasure.
There are a couple of sellers in the lane at Abids where I park my bike before setting off to look for books on the pavements. I usually begin by checking out their wares first before going on a predetermined circuit I follow every Sunday. My first find was in the spread of books laid out on the pavement by one of the sellers in the lane. I spotted ‘Break, Blow, Burn’ by Camille Paglia and picked it up to take a closer look at the cover where it said ‘reads forty three of the world’s best poems.’ I glanced inside and found that the book belonged to a professor in an engineering college that I pass everyday on my way to work.
I have never before come across anyone who explained poems to me. This was the first such book so I thought I should buy it right away. But when the seller quoted two hundred and fifty rupees for it I hesitated for a while. Holding the hardcover book with the pink cover in my hand I had an internal conversation with myself about whether it was worth buying the book at that high price. I told myself that I would almost never find anything like it especially something by Camille Paglia. Seeing my reluctance the seller lowered the price to two hundred prices and finally settled at a hundred and eighty rupees that I told him I was ready to pay for it.
Sometime later I met Shrikant and after our usual talks about books, movies, and other subjects of mutual interest at the café we were out again. It wasn’t very hot and so we could browse comfortably. I found another book with a pink cover-The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown. The book was another massive tome with nearly five hundred pages of small print. Though I knew it would be quite some time before I found the time to read it I bought the book because I was getting it for only thirty rupees. I had never read anything by Tina Brown so I bought it.
I moved on farther holding the two books I had just found and feeling quite pleased with myself. I thought my Sunday was made and that it did not matter if I did not find anything else. I wasn’t really looking but when we reached the seller who sets shop before the GPO I found a title I had already read but did not own a copy of. I saw just the name ‘Atul Gawande’ peeping out from underneath a book on top of it. I knelt down and stretched my hand to take out the book from the spread. My heart gave a leap when I saw that it was ‘Being Mortal’ which was the latest of Atul Gawande. It was an almost new hardcover copy and I knew I had to buy it. The only problem again turned out to be the cost. The seller asked for three hundred and fifty rupees which was more than half the price printed on the back. After some hard bargaining I managed to lower the price to a hundred and fifty rupees. I felt elated that at last I had my own copy of ‘Being Mortal’ that I had read sometime last year after borrowing the copy that Uma had ordered online. I wish I could now find ‘Gene’ by Siddhartha Mukherjee at Abids sometime soon.
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