The Sunday Haul (on 24-09-2017)

As usual the festival shopping rush disrupted the book bazaar at Abids scattering the sellers from their usual places to different corners of the streets. The books too were disturbed as a result and the some of the sellers displayed only a fraction of their wares. However, it did not bother me much because eagle-eyed that I become wherever books are found I managed to spot a few good titles, four, to be exact. Once again there were more cookbooks than other titles in last Sunday’s haul that was quite heavy. One gargantuan tome that I found was almost nine hundred pages long and twice as thick as a brick.

It was solo browsing too as none of my friends turned up, and the first find was a cookbook. I spotted ‘The Best of Goan Cooking’ by Gilda Mendonsa with one of the sellers on the pavements on the road leading to the Taj Mahal hotel. The cover of ‘The Best of Goan Cooking’ had a charming look and I bought it right away without even checking out the recipes inside. I got this nice title for just fifty rupees. This was one of the two cookbooks I found at the same seller.

The other cookbook title was ‘Food is Home’ by Sarjana with the sub-title ‘The Little Book of Italian Cooking.’ I had seen it earlier too but somehow wasn’t tempted enough to buy it. But last Sunday I picked it up and after leafing through a few pages decided it would be better to buy it. I know nothing about Italian dishes except pasta that I haven’t yet tasted. It wasn’t to learn to prepare pasta I bought this book but to know something about Italian cuisine. However, this book isn’t a cookbook but a sort of memoir as Shobhaa De says in the introduction. This title too I got for fifty rupees.

I saw a nice copy of ‘Nectar in a Sieve’ by Kamala Markandaya which had a different cover. I thought of buying it but somehow I decided not to. But now I think I should have bought it since I love to collect old editions of books by Indian authors. Maybe next Sunday if I happen to find it I will buy it. Then I had also seen a hardcover copy of ‘Complications’ by Atul Gawande that I should have bought though I already have a copy of this title. This hardcover seemed a different and earlier edition but the price pencilled on it deterred me.

The next two finds were at Chikkadpally on the way home. It was an exciting find. I spotted a beautiful copy of ‘Misplaced Objects and Other Poems’ by K. Satchidanandan. It was a Sahitya Akademi book and was almost new. It has eighty five poems translated by Satchidanandan himself from the original Malayalam into English. I was thrilled to find this collection of poems by one of my favourite Indian poets.

With the same seller I found what I can only call as the Mother of all Indian cookbooks. I found ‘The Madhur Jaffrey Cookbook’ an intimidating tome of almost nine hundred pages. It was actually two books- Eastern Vegetarian Cooking, and An Invitation to Indian Cooking, combined into one. I had to think for a long time before deciding to buy this book though I knew I would never find it again anywhere. It was published by Tiger Books International of London, which was a name I haven’t heard before.

‘The Madhur Jaffrey Cookbook’ was not one of the thickest tomes but the thickest book I had bought so far. With over 650 recipes in it, it would take about two years for me to go through the recipes in it at the rate of one a day, that is, if the wife lets me experiment in the kitchen.

The Sunday Haul on (17-09-2017)

The haul at Abids on Sunday is getting heavier by the week. The Sunday before last I had a haul of almost nine books and last Sunday too I brought home four books. I had thought that with the Dasara festival barely two weeks away the regular shops at Abids would be open and there wouldn’t be many books to buy. But though some of the regular shops were open displacing the second hand book sellers I landed a modest haul. I wonder if I pick up more books when I am alone because last Sunday none of my friends turned up.

Shashi Deshpande is a writer whose books I have but I haven’t heard much about Gauri Deshpande. One of the first titles I found last Sunday at Abids was a nice copy of ‘The Lackadaisical Sweeper’ by Gauri Deshpande. It was published under the ‘Manas’ imprint and I got this collection of short stories for just thirty rupees. These are the following sixteen stories in it: ‘Hookworm, Lamprey, Tick, Fluke and Flea; The Lackadaisical Sweeper; Hello, Stranger!; A Harmless Girl; Map; Whatever Happened to…; Smile and Smile and …; The Debt; Insy Winsy Spider; Vervain; Rose Jam; Morgan in Disguise; Dmitri in the Afternoon; Habits; Brand New Pink Nikes.’ At the end of the book is an afterword by R. Raj Rao.

At another seller I was surprised to find another collection of short stories under the ‘Mana’ imprint and spotting this book got me excited. It was ‘Neermai’ by Na Muthuswamy, a writer I had only heard about recently. ‘Neermai’ by Na Muthuswamy is a collection of ten short stories translated by Lakshmi Holstrom into English from the original Tamil. The ten stories in it: An Incident; His Father’s School; Time Passing in Punjai; The Honeycomb and the Snake; How Shall We Go to Chembanarkoil? ; Death; Who Will be My Refuge; Cart; Neermai; and Battlefield. However this seller was a different one, someone who prices his books too impossibly high and doesn’t much encourage bargaining. So I paid the price he quoted, a hundred rupees, and took the book.

Though none of my friends had turned up I followed another Sunday routine at Abids by having chai at the Irani café. I sat and leafed through the two collections of short stories I had found, quite unusually by the same publisher. Both the books were in quite good condition and I felt lucky finding them. The next find was a wonderful copy of ‘Snakeman’ by Zai Whitaker that I got for just fifty rupees. I have been reading about Romulus Whitaker since I was a kid, and had also been seeing him in action on the wildlife channels on television.

The last find was another cookbook I had seen earlier with another seller who wanted something like a hundred and fifty rupees for it. However last Sunday I got the same title for just thirty rupees. It was a copy of Part I of ‘Cook & See’ by S. Meenakshi Ammal.

The Sunday Haul (on 10-09-2017)

The first find of the haul at Abids last Sunday happened just moments after parking my two-wheeler. I spotted a beautiful copy of ‘A Room of One’s Own’ by Virginia Woolf that I got for just twenty rupees. Though I already have a couple of copies of this title I couldn’t resist buying this copy as well because it was almost brand new. Though my two regular friends did not turn up Jai had made his rare appearance and together we set off on the hunt after a cup of chai at our usual Irani café.

No soon had we stepped out of the café than I spotted a Keigo Higashino title that Jai urged me to buy. Sometime back he had presented me with a copy of ‘The Devotion of Suspect X’ that I found to be fascinating. So when he told me to pick up ‘Malice’ I did as he told. I got the book quite cheap for fifty rupees or so. I’ve already forgotten what I paid for it.

My third find was a rare copy of ‘The Chess Players and Other Stories’ by Prem Chand that I saw in a heap of books that were being sold for ten rupees. This was an Orient Paperbacks copy published exactly fifty years ago, in 1967. These are the ten stories in this title: The Voice of God; The Village Well; The Daughter-in-Law; Two Sisters; Wheel of Fortune; Story of Two Bulls; Laila; The Shroud; The Chess-Players and Requiem. These stories were translated from Hindi to English by Gurdial Malik. The copy I found wasn’t in a good condition with the spine damaged but I bought it. A long time back I had read Prem Chand’s ‘Godaan’ when I was too young to understand what I was reading so I do not remember much of the book. I hope the stories in this title takes me back to ‘Godaan’ again after I finish reading the stories.

I really cannot recollect who it was who wanted a copy of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ by Maurice Sendak but I had grabbed a copy I had spotted a long time back. I came across another copy last Sunday at Abids and I got it for the unbelievable price of ten rupees. It was among a large number of colouring books for children that I usually do not look at carefully but somehow I spotted it. This could have been my third copy had I not missed buying another good copy I had seen some time back at Abids.

I had picked up five more books after this, of which two were cookbooks that are not much to write about here. Another title was a Scholastic title on writing that I had a copy of already. One title was about growing roses and another was a Wolverine comic for my son. It turned out I had already bought a copy of the same title earlier. It was a large haul of nine books but only four of them were worth mentioning here so I have written only about those interesting titles.

The Sunday Haul (03-09-2017)

The haul last Sunday at Abids was only three titles. It was the day after the festival of Bakrid and I thought there wouldn’t be many sellers as almost all of them happen Muslims. However I was surprised to see that save for just one seller all of them were present at Abids with their books. It was another wonderful morning, bright and sunny albeit a bit too warm. I did not mind it as I went along with two of my friends looking for the books. Another friend joined midway so there were four of us.

The first find happened to be two cookbooks. One was by Sanjeev Kapoor titled ‘Khana Khazana- Celebration of Indian Cookery’ that had more than a hundred recipes of dishes across the country. The other title was a Parsi cookbook titled ‘Jamva Chaloji’ by Katy Dalal that someone had wrapped the covers lovingly in a plastic jacket. This 124 page book had more than two hundred and ten recipes of Paris dishes with names like ‘Bapaiji Ni Dhansakh Ni Dar’, ‘Sali Ne Jardaloo Ma Gos’ ‘Govarsing-Ne-Gharab No-Patio’ that sounded both wonderful and mouth-watering at the same time. Both were in good condition and the Sanjeev Kapoor was a hardcover copy that I got cheap. I got them both for a total of hundred and thirty rupees. I don’t know why I picked up the Parsi cookbook but I bought it nevertheless.

The third find was in a pile of books selling for only ten rupees. I remember reading the name Emma Lathen somewhere so when I saw the name on the cover of a book in that heap I picked it up. On the cover Emma Lathen was described as ‘America’s Agatha Christie’ so knowing how Agatha Christie books are I picked up ‘Pick Up Sticks’ by Emma Lathen. The book was in a very good condition and I couldn’t believe one can find good books at such a throwaway price.

A Midweek Haul

If I am not at Abids on Sunday it could be because of three reasons. Either I am sick, or I am out of town or it is raining heavily. So, last Sunday I couldn’t go to Abids for my weekly fix of books because I was recovering from a bout of fever and too weak to go outdoors. But I was in a better shape by Monday and even went to work. If I don’t go to Abids on Sunday to look at the books the entire week I am in a grumpy mood. The only cure for it is to drop in at a second hand bookstore and smell the books. On Tuesday I dropped in again at the MR Books store opposite Lifestyle just to feel normal again.

Sometime back I had picked up a book at Akshara bookstore in Jubilee Hills that I entirely forgot to write about here. I will write about it in another post but briefly it was a compilation of the 100 best crime novels. It featured so titles that I already have and many I don’t even know. One of the titles was a title I seemed to have come across at Abids but hadn’t thought much about it. At MR Books on Tuesday I came across this book which was ‘Savages’ by Don Winslow. I saw on the back cover that it was made into a movie directed by Oliver Stone, and starred Benicio Del Toro and Salma Hayek among others. It was a good copy so I picked it up and I was glad I found it.

A long time ago I came across a list of half a dozen title that not many know about but are supposed to be very good. One of the titles happened to be Dodie Smith’s ‘I Capture the Castle’ that I had found at the Hyderabad Book Fair a couple of years ago. It wasn’t a very good copy but I bought it since I thought I’d not be able to find the title again anywhere. I was so wrong since I came across a beautiful copy at MR Bookstore a little later but I did not buy it because the price was too high and moreover I already owned a copy. But when I saw the same copy again on Tuesday in the ‘Rs 120 per kilo’ section I decided to pick it up. I knew from experience that just two books won’t weigh a kilo so I went looking for two more books to make up for a kilo which was the minimum quantity one had to buy.

Luckily I found another good title by an author I had read only recently- Alan Paton. I had read his autobiography, ‘Towards the Mountain,’ first before reading ‘Cry, the Beloved Country’ and had regretted not reading him earlier. At MR on Tuesday I came across a beautiful copy of ‘Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful’ that I instantly picked up without thinking twice. It is the first title in a projected trilogy.

The next find was by an author I had been looking for since a long time. Recently I found Lorrie Moore’s ‘Birds of America’ and also ‘Self Help’ both collections of short stories that I was waiting to read since I had read high praise about Lorrie Moore’s writing somewhere. This time I found a copy of ‘A Gate at the Stairs’ by Lorrie Moore which is a novel. I haven’t read anything other than short stories by Lorrie Moore so I was excited to find her novel.

I got all four books that made up a little less than a kilo and they cost me just a hundred and ten rupees which means I got each book for something around thirty rupees.