The Sunday Haul (on 19-11-2017)

A haul of more than two books at the Abids book bazaar on Sundays make me glad as well as nervous. I feel glad because I have added more books to be read and nervous because there isn’t much space in my bookshelves for more books. Last Sunday I ended up with another big haul of seven books, of which one was a gift from my friend Jai. I hadn’t been to Abids the previous Sunday when it seems Jai had come along with the gift to give it to me. Due to some work at the Institute I wasn’t able to make it to Abids on that day. So Jai said he would come this Sunday to give me the book but wouldn’t tell me the title. The suspense of what Jai had brought for me made me very eager to go to Abids last Sunday. It was another bright and slightly warm morning when I landed up at Abids.

The first haul consisted of two cookbooks, both hardcover copies. The first one was ‘Khajana of Healthy Tasty Recipes’ by Sanjeev Kapoor and the second cookbook was ‘Step-by-Step Indian Cookery’ by Khalid Aziz. Both were in extremely good condition and I got them from my favourite bookseller at Abids for just a hundred rupees.

With the same seller I spotted Geoff Dyer’s ‘Yoga for People Who Can’t be Bothered to Do It’’ that I got for fifty rupees. The price felt a bit high but the copy, a discard of the British Library, was in a good condition. It was a non-fiction title and had ‘Travel/Memoir’ at the back.
Then I met my friends, Uma and Jai, and we sat in the café for chai. Jai took out a book and handed it to me. It was a copy of ‘The Good Muslim of Jackson Heights’ by Jaysinh Birjepatil. I was thrilled that I had another title by an author I had found only the other day. The Sunday before last I had found Jaysinh Birjepatil’s ‘Chinnery’s Hotel’ after finding it in a list of books that Khushwant Singh put in his book ‘Khushwantnama’

On a visit to the Best Book store in Lakdikapul sometime during this month I had seen a copy of ‘I Take this Woman’ by Rajinder Singh Bedi. A Penguin title, the copy was in a good condition but the price was a hundred rupees which prevented me from buying it though I wanted to buy it. I knew it was a good book but since I had already bought two books I decided I would buy it on my next visit. However, last Sunday I spotted this title in a heap of books selling for just twenty rupees. I was glad I did not buy the copy I had seen at the bookstore because the copy I saw at Abids was not only very cheap but it was the original edition published by Orient Paperbacks in 1967. ‘I Take This Woman’ is the English version of ‘Ek Chadar Maili Si’, a Punjabi novel that won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Rajinder Singh Bedi. Khushwant Singh translated it from Punjabi into English as it says on the cover.

The next title in the haul was a wonderful find. There are a few sellers in Abids who are very knowledgeable about authors and the titles and they don’t sell their books for less than what they think the title is worth. It is futile to bargain with such sellers and one has to buy the book at their prices. On the other hand there are a couple of sellers who are absolutely ignorant of the books they sell. These sellers usually have a fixed price, often very low, for all the books with them. There’s one such seller who sometimes sells many books for twenty rupees. Last Sunday I got a copy of ‘Dear Life’ by Alice Munro from one such seller for only twenty rupees. It was an unbelievable find and I was quite thrilled to find this collection of short stories by one of the greatest master of the short story. I didn’t mind that the cover on the front had a bit missing at the top. This collection of fourteen stories has these stories: To Reach Japan; Amundsen; Leaving Maverley; Gravel; Haven; Pride; Corrie; Train; In Sight of the Lake; Dolly; The Eye; Night; Voices; and Dear Life, the title story.

The last find was another screenwriting title- ‘How to Write a Selling Screenplay’ by Christopher Keane. Books on screenwriting are something I cannot resist buying and this has meant that I have more than a dozen titles on screenwriting. However, I haven’t finished the script I have been working on since heaven knows when. The copy I found was one that someone had got bound nicely. I got this lovely copy for a hundred rupees.
So that was the haul last Sunday at Abids. With this haul the total number of books I bought this year so far 173. There’s still December left and the Hyderabad Book Fair which means that the total tally could touch 200 books or more.

The Pens I Got as Gifts

Nothing puts me in a good mood than holding a beautiful pen in my hand and scribbling away. I love pens, be it a ball point or a fountain pen. Knowing how much I love writing with pens my friends and family shower me with gifts of pens. So whenever I get a pen as a gift I automatically fall in love with it and also with the person who gave it to me. Last month around Diwali I got not one but two pens as unexpected gifts. For some reason around Diwali time I feel low, physically and emotionally. But this year the two pens had me smiling like I’ve never received two pens as gifts in my life.

There are close friends and there are very close friends, the sort you hold conversations with in your mind everyday even if they are thousands of miles away. I have one such very close friend- Keshav who I met in the first year of college thirty six years ago. Others know him as Dr Kranti but to me and a few others he is Keshav. When his ex-colleague called me up to say Keshav had sent a gift for me I was surprised. Keshav had shifted to the US to work in an international organization sometime in March this year and there was no way he could have sent it from there. But it seems Keshav had been to Nagpur on a short visit and had sent a gift for me through his colleague at Central Institute for Cotton Research that Keshav headed as its Director. When I went to meet his colleague who had come to Hyderabad for the Diwali holidays I thought it would be a book Keshav wanted me to read. But when I saw the black Sheaffer box with I knew it had to be a pen. I was thrilled when it turned out to be a beautiful fountain pen. When I checked it out I realized I had to get a new filling system for it because there was only provision to attach a cartridge. It would be another excuse for me to drop in at Deccan Pen Stores I thought.

Then a couple of days later Hari sprang a surprise on me. We usually meet once a week over coffee but that evening he turned up with family. When they took out the box and handed it to me I was in for a pleasant shock. It turned out to be a stunning Sheaffer ball point pen. It was just the thing I had been looking for. I wanted something classy to write with at the office and till then I had nothing. Now that Sheaffer ball point is something I carry to work every day. It was a wonderful gift that complemented the fountain pen Keshav gifted me. Now I own a pair of Sheaffer pens presented by my close friends and they are gifts I will cherish forever because they made my Diwali something I will never forget.

A Midweek Haul and the Sunday Haul

This habit of looking for books at Abids has become such an inseparable part of my Sunday routine that the very thought of missing it makes me extremely nervous. It doesn’t seem like a Sunday to me if I don’t appear at Abids and spend a couple of hours there. Last week I came to know that I would have to miss my visit to Abids because I had to be at the office almost half the day on Sunday till I finished my work. I was afraid I’d miss the trip to Abids because I did not have an idea when I would be able to finish the work at the office. So assuming I wouldn’t be able to make it to Abids I decided to drop in at the Best Books store at Lakdikapul on Saturday.

Sometime in January this year I had found a copy of ‘Roots’ by Malayatoor Ramakrishnan at the Oxford Bookstore stall at the Hyderabad Literary Festival in Hyderabad Public School. I haven’t read it yet and at the Best Books store I found another title by Malayatoor Ramakrishnan who had an interesting career. He was a sub-editor in Free Press Journal, worked in the state judicial service and later joined the IAS which he left after a few years and took up full time writing. He was also Chairman of the Kerala Lalit Kala Academy for seven years. It is a fascinating background. I found his ‘Yakshi’ a Penguin title that I picked up. This wasn’t the only book I picked up on Saturday. The other title I bought at the Best Books store was ‘The Nephew’ by James Purdy, again a Penguin title, which for me, is a guarantee of something good. The prices were a bit higher than what these books might sell at Abids but I bought them for a little less than two hundred rupees.

Luckily for me I was able to finish my work at the office by half past eleven on Sunday. I realized that it wasn't too late to go to Abids and rushed there hoping I’d be able to do an hour of browsing. Actually, I had spent Saturday night at the hostel in the Institute where I am working now and hadn’t had a bath. So I wanted to take a quick look around Abids and leave early for home, take a bath, have lunch and catch up on my sleep. After a fruitless search I spotted a title hidden behind another book on a shelf. I could see only the title on the spine-‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ by Alan Sillitoe. I had read somewhere about this title and had read that it was a good tale. I had thought it was a novel but it turned out to be a short story. There were altogether nine short stories in this collection: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner; Uncle Ernest; Mr Raynor the School-teacher; The Fishing-boat Picture; Noah’s Ark, On Saturday Afternoon; The Match; The Disgrace of Jim Scarfedale; and The Decline and Fall of Franke Buller. I got this wonderful title for just thirty rupees.

The Sunday Haul (on 29-10-2017)

This is the 1000th Post on this blog.

In the past due to either wrong judgment or overconfidence I missed buying some really good books at Abids. The following Sunday I try to locate the title after realizing my mistake but by then someone had already made away with the title. I missed several good titles that way, too many to be listed here. Once again I made the same mistake a couple of Sundays ago but last Sunday, however, I found a title I had missed on the previous Sunday. It was a huge relief to have found that title.

Two Sundays ago I had seen a copy of ‘Chinnery’s Hotel by Jaysinh Birjepatil at a seller near the GPO at Abids. I picked it up and took a look at the cover as I had not heard of the title or the author and put it back. It was a big mistake but I did not it then. The next Sunday, that is the Sunday before last, at Chikkadpally I saw ‘Khushwantnama-The Lessons of My Life’ by Khushwant Singh. I leafed through it and in one of the articles on writing in it I found a list of novels that made a deep impression on Khushwant Singh. One of the titles in the list was ‘Chinnery’s Hotel by Jaysinh Birjepatil. I felt like kicking myself for having not had the sense to pick it up the first time I saw it. I felt so bad that I did not buy ‘Khushwantnama’ thinking that it would remind me of the mistake I had made.

However, last Sunday I got lucky. When I reached the seller near GPO I looked carefully at the books spread out on the pavements and spotted ‘Chinnery’s Hotel by Jaysinh Birjepatil. It was a thrilling moment as I immediately pounced on it. The seller asked a hundred rupees for it that I paid gladly. Feeling expansive I wanted to savor the joy of finding a good title so I sat in Grand Hotel and leafed through Chinnery’s Hotel while sipping chai. I read that Jaysinh Birjepatil had written two more books-. I wonder why I had not read about this writer anywhere. But I was glad I found this book.

The icing on the cake was that I found ‘Khushwantnama’ too at Chikkadpalli and picked it up as well. I got this hard cover title with a beautiful cover for a hundred rupees. It has about to dozen short pieces on diverse topics that had appeared earlier in Outlook magazine, Hindustan Times, and The Tribune. Of all the articles I had been attracted by two- The Business of Writing and What it Takes to be a Writer. It was the latter article I had read standing and came across the list that had a dozen title of which ‘Chinnnery’s Hotel’ was one. There was another title- ‘The Hero’s Walk’ by Anita Rau Badami that I want to find next.