The Sunday Haul (on 26-2-2017)

Last Sunday at Abids it wasn’t as hot as it was the Sunday before. It was sunny and warm when I reached Abids at my usual time of eleven. Apart from the good weather the other good thing was the presence of my friends who turned up after a long time. We sat for a long time in the café talking books, movies, and catching up on our lives until that day. To top up I ended up with a nice haul of four books.

Sometime last month I finished reading Ingmar Bergman’s autobiography-The Magic Lantern- that I had found in October at Abids. I enjoyed reading about his trials and tribulations during his life in the movies. I don’t remember if he had mentioned in it that he had also written another book. I was surprised to find another Ingmar Bergman title last Sunday. It was ‘Sunday’s Children,’ a novel, translated from Swedish by Joan Tate that I picked up from the pavement. I got it quite cheap at just thirty rupees.

With the same seller I also found an EM Foster title- The Hill of Devi- which seems to be some sort of correspondence with someone about the time Foster was in the employ of some kind of royalty in an Indian state. It seemed interesting because it was one of those Orient Paperbacks editions issued sometime in the fifties or sixties with beautiful covers. I took the book primarily for the cover and because of the fact that it was an Orient-Mayfair Paperbacks title. I also noticed that the publisher was Arnold-Hienemann. It was quite cheap too, just thirty rupees.

The best part of the copy of ‘The Hill of Devi’ that I found was finding a small label pinned to the first page with the words ‘ With Best Complements from B.P. Agarwalla, Dhansar’ typed in blue colour on it. It made wonder who B.P.Agarwalla was and who the book was intended for.

Walking further down the street I had seen a collection of contemporary American short stories that seemed very interesting because there was a story by James Slater in it and other writers. Though I wanted to buy it the stiff price quoted by the seller put me off and I moved on. Then in a heap of books selling for only thirty rupees I spotted a book by an author with a name I had seen minutes before in the collection of American short stories. The book I saw was ‘In Country’ by Bobbie Ann Mason and I took it though until then I had not heard the name of this writer.

The fourth and last find of the Sunday’s haul was a small but beautifully designed cookbook. It was one in a series of ‘Quick and Easy Indian’ cookbooks by Roli Books. The one I found was ‘Simply Vegetarian’ that I made a grab for the moment I saw it. It has more than fifty recipes for starters and main courses with beautiful photographs of the dishes that made my mouth water. I was surprised that something so well designed could be produced in Indian but when I read inside I realized that the book was printed and bound in, where else, China.