For more than twenty years I’ve been coming to Abids, week after week, drawn by the prospect of finding good titles in the heaps of books laid out on the pavements every Sunday. Very rarely have I returned disappointed at not finding anything good. Almost every Sunday I find something at least one title good enough to buy and bring home. Over the years I’ve bought thousands of books at the Abids book bazaar on Sundays. This is one place that never ceases to amaze me with kind of treasures it offers to the true book lover.
Since the beginning of this year I’ve been quite lucky finding some really wonderful titles every Sunday at Abids. Last Sunday before I met Uma I found two more good titles. The first find was ‘Women Travel’ which was a title of Rough Guides. The hefty volume had several stories by women travellers of their trips across the world. There were articles by a few writers that I had read about earlier such as Margaret Atwood (Ecuador), Sara Wheeler (Antartica), but the rest were writers I am not aware of. The first-hand accounts of these writers covered almost every country in the world. There were accounts by Sheila Keegan, Rebecca Hardie, and Eleanor Simmons of their trips in India. I got this interesting title for just thirty rupees.
A little before having tea in the café I found a copy of Issue No 210 of ‘The Paris Review’ that I decided to pick up. It had an ‘Art of Fiction’ interview with Herta Muller who won the Nobel Prize a couple of years ago. I got this issue of ‘The Paris Review’ for fifty rupees.
If I’ve read about a particular title and want it I only have to wait for some time for it to turn up at Abids. One such title that I have been waiting to find finally turned up at Abids last Sunday. Ever since I read about ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ by George V Higgins that Stephen King wrote about in his book ‘On Writing’ I’ve been on the lookout for it. I’ve managed to find other George V Higgins titles such as ‘Outlaws’ ‘Wonderful Years, Wonderful Years,’ ‘Bomber’s Law’ but not ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ which turned into some sort of Holy Grail for me.
It’s been a pretty long wait for it, almost a decade, so imagine my joy when at last I spotted it last Sunday a few minutes after we’ve had tea in the café. It felt curiously wonderful holding the copy of ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ in my hand, feeling as if I’ve dug out a diamond out of the earth. I had read “Outlaws” by George V. Higgins that I found to be riveting and wonderfully written. I had then set my heart on finding ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ and at last my wish came true when I spotted it. The wonderful thing was that I did not have to pay much for it. The seller asked for just thirty rupees for it which was peanuts.
I started reading Mint Lounge since more than a few months and I found it to be very interesting. I have a few favourite columns in it one of which is the one by Samar Halarnkar who writes on cooking. In the issue the Saturday before last he had mentioned that his collection of cookbooks is more than hundred strong and one of the titles in his collection is ‘Prashad’ by Jiggs Kalra. I had also read about this book sometime in the past and had vaguely wondered if I would be able to find it at Abids. It did not occur to me to buy it online because the price was somewhere around three hundred rupees. Last Sunday one of the titles I found happened to be ‘Prashad.’ It looked like an ancient copy though it was intact in all respects except for some minor tears on the jacket. The best part was that I got this hardcover book for only fifty rupees which I thought was a steal.
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