Double Post Friday: Post 2- The Sunday Haul (on 26-05-2019)

Before I stepped out of the house last Sunday I was aware there was a Heatwave forecast by the Met department and that the temperature would reach somewhere around 43 degrees C. It wasn’t even eleven in the morning when I started out for Abids but it felt like I was in an open oven with the sun beating down mercilessly. I almost turned back unwilling to bear the heat but since I had not been to Abids the previous Sunday I couldn’t resist my weekly fix of the Sunday Abids second hand book market. So on I went and the visit resulted in a haul of seven titles, all of them very interesting ones.

The first title I found was a beautiful copy of ‘A Kiss Before Dying’ by Ira Levine. I picked it up because it was a Penguin edition and also because I had not heard of this title before. Another reason was that the seller was someone who doesn’t usually ask for more than ten rupees for any book. So I got this title for ten rupees only along with another title that I found next to it. It was a copy of ‘The Girls from Overseas’ by Nergis Dalal. I have begun buying copies of titles of books in English by Indian writers that were published in the sixties and seventies. I have managed to collect quite a few of these wonderful titles. I got the copy of ‘The Girls from Overseas’ also for ten rupees.

Then after the chai at the Irani I realized that it was getting hotter by the hour so I wanted to finish as soon as possible and go back home. But as I kept finding one interesting title after another I stayed back hoping to find more. Another wonderful title I found was a beautiful copy of ‘Flavors of India’ by Madhur Jaffrey that had a stunning cover with the famous chef on it. I managed to get it for a hundred rupees. Moments after I bought it I spotted another wonderful title- ‘The Master of Petersburg’ by J.M. Coetzee on the same shelf. I paid only fifty rupees for ‘The Master of Petersburg.’

A few steps away I spotted a copy of ‘An Unfinished Woman’ by Lilian Hellman, her first memoir. I had only heard of Lilian Hellman but haven’t found anything by her so far so when I saw this title I decided to take it. I paid only thirty rupees for it.

Until recently I had seen a few copies of ‘The Singer’ by Mayah Balse, another English novel by an Indian writer published sometime in the sixties. But those copies I saw were not in a good condition with either the cover damaged or some pages missing. Last Sunday I found a copy of ‘The Singer’ by Mayah Balse in perfect condition and I grabbed it the moment I saw it.

A long time ago, more than fifteen years I guess, I picked up a book purely on a hunch. It did not have a cover but a cover made of white sheet on which was written ‘Paperweight’ by Stephen Fry. Later after I read the enjoyable book I became a fan of Stephen Fry’s humor. When I found a nice and proper copy of the same title with the cover intact recently I bought it. Though I haven’t read his other titles I did not want to miss buying a copy of his memoir ‘More Fool Me’ by Stephen Fry that I saw last Sunday at Abids. It did not matter to me how hot it was out there but I was glad about my seven book haul last Sunday.

Double Post Friday: Post 1: The Sunday Haul at Tiruvananthapuram

The Sunday before last I was in Tiruvananthapuram on a family vacation in Kerala. I had read about a few places where second hand books are available on a pavement in Tiruvananthapuram. However due to a tight schedule I was not able to look for them. But while returning to our hotel after lunch I spotted a familiar sight- books in tall piles on a pavement. I jumped out of the autorickshaw expecting, what with Kerala known for its high literacy and book crazy people, to find some wonderful title. Instead I found only the bestsellers I see everywhere. Just when I thought there would be nothing worth taking back home I spotted a copy of ‘Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Bewitched the West’ by Lesley Downer that I immediately grabbed only for the sake of buying a book on Sunday rather than for the title.

The Delhi Haul

Two months after my earlier trip to New Delhi in February I was off to Delhi again on another trip my second of the year. This too was a six day trip so I made plans to check out the places where I usually drop in to check out the books.

The first visit on the second day in the evening was to Connaught Place. At Anil Book Corner somewhere in H Block of Connaught Place I checked out the titles arranged in tall stacks. On my last visit I had not found worth buying at this place but now on this visit there were a couple of titles that looked interesting. I spotted a nice copy of ‘The Dew Breaker’ by Edwidge Danticat whose ‘Brother, I’m Dying’ I had found at the Sunday book market at Darya Gunj on a previous visit to Delhi last June. It was a haunting tale about Haiti that was difficult to forget so I bought ‘The Dew Breaker’ without a second thought.

I found my first Nora Ephron title Crazy Salad’ in 2017, and ‘I Feel Bad About My Neck’ in January, 2018. I’ve read both and enjoyed Nora Ephron’s humour which is why when I saw ‘I Remember Nothing’ by Nora Ephron I picked it up though I had to shell out a substantial amount. These are the essays in ‘I Remember Nothing’ : I Remember Nothing; Who Are You?; Journalism: A Love Story; The Legend; My Aruba; My Life as an Heiress; Going to the Movies; Twenty-three Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised by Over and Over Again; I Just Want to Say: The Egg-White Omelette; I Just Want to Say: Teflon; I Just Want to Say: No, I Do Not Want Another Bottle of Pellegrino; I Just Want to Say: The World Is Not Flat; I Just Want to Say: Chicken Soup; Pentimento; My Life as a Meat Loaf; Addicted to L-U-V; The Six Stages of E-Mail; Flops; Christmas Dinner; The D Word; The O Word; What I Won’t Miss; and What I Will Miss.

On another day I decided to go to Pahargunj. I took an auto from Telangana Bhavan on Asoka Road to Jackson Books, Paharganj. There were books wrapped in plastic that the person in the store said were new books. I wasn’t interested in new books and there wasn’t anything interesting in the pitiably small pile of ‘old books’ in the front so I decided to look at the new books once again to see if there was anything I missed in my first casual glance. On a detailed, slower round of looking at the titles I found ‘The Grass is Singing’ by Doris Lessing for two hundred and fifty rupees.

The Sunday Haul

The Sunday before last I had to leave for Delhi on a week-long visit. My flight was in the afternoon so I had to pack and get stuff from outside so I did not go to Abids to look for books. Another reason was it was too hot and I did not want to risk it before leaving the town. Actually, Delhi was hotter than Hyderabad though I managed to go out in the evenings and check out two places where I pick up books whenever I am in Delhi. In the previous post I had written about the three books I found in Delhi. I had actually planned to stay back in Delhi to visit the Darya Ganj book market on Sunday but it was so hot I chose to come back and do the same at Abids.

Though I must own around two hundred titles related to the writing craft I do not seem to have made any significant progress in sharpening my writing skills. I cannot let go of any book related to writing whether it is a text book or otherwise so when I spotted a copy of ‘The St Martin’s Guide to Writing’ by Rise B. Axelrod and Charles R. Cooper. I did not hesitate when the seller quoted a steep price for it and bought it. I believe there’s a lot I have to learn about writing and there’s no book I do not want to read to learn whatever it offers. Writing is tough but learning to write is expensive for the likes of me.

The second book I found was one that I decided to buy just for the sake of its striking cover alone the moment I spotted it. It was a beautiful and almost new copy of ‘God’s Own Land’ by Shaukat Siddiqi, a title and an author I had not heard or read about before. The sub title of ‘God’s Own Land’ was ‘A Novel of Pakistan’ that got me very interested in it. It turned to have been published by UNESCO in 1991 and and later in 1993 by Rupa & Co. I read on the back cover that the author Shaukat Siddiqi was considered as one of the most talented of Urdu writers. What was more interesting was that it was also written that the book had been serialized on Pakistan television. It was translated into English by David J Matthews. I got this wonderful book for just thirty rupees.

Sometime back in 2017 I had found a copy of ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ by Richard Flanagan and the copy I found did not have a cover. Last Sunday at Chikkadpally I spotted a nice copy of the same title with cover page intact. I decided to buy it thinking I would give away the other copy without the cover to someone who would enjoy reading it. I got this copy with the cover for fifty rupees whereas I had paid seventy rupees for the copy without the cover.

Then with another seller at a corner of the RTC X Roads junction I found a copy of ‘Americanaah’ by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie in a heap of books selling for only thirty rupees.

The Sunday Haul (on 28-04-2019)

It was supposed to be a very hot day. The Meteorological Department had issued a ‘Heatwave Alert’ for two days which included last Sunday. From the fierce heat of the past few days I had expected the sun to be blazing down on my head and frying my small government brain. But surprisingly it was cloudy all morning until nearly one in the afternoon. There was no sun beating down, no sweat pouring down the head, and no great thirst on Sunday. In fact it was quite pleasant and what made it more pleasant that I found five good titles two of which I already have.

In school I studied Hindi and so I can read and write in that language though not as fast as I want. Earlier I had read just two Hindi titles and there was one title I had wanted to read in the language in which it was written and that was ‘Raag Darbari’ that I bought in a bookstore at Nainital sometime last year. Though I haven’t yet begun reading it I still look out for other good Hindi titles and last Sunday I found two of them with the same seller. I found a copy of ‘Laal Tin Ka Chath’ by Nirmal Varma and a good copy of ‘Pratinidhi Kahaniya’ by Muktibodh that I got rather cheap at just twenty rupees each. I don’t know when I will finally get to read these two titles but I am sure going to read them in my life time. Then it was tea time so I sat in the café all alone and leafed through the two books.

After the tea break I spotted a nice book with the covers lovingly encased in thick plastic with the title ‘A Time to Die’ by Parappurathu. It was an English translation of a Malayam novel written by Parappurathu aka K.E. Mathai. The translator is C. Paul Verghese. It is a slim title and appears like one can finish reading it in a couple of hours. One of these days when I am travelling by plane I plan to take it along and finish it before the plane lands.

A few years ago unable to wait to find a copy of Dave Barry’s latest ‘Boogers Are My Beat’ I asked a relative to get a copy. Of course, I started reading it the moment it landed in my hands. That was one of the few new titles by some of my favourite writers I couldn’t wait to read. Last Sunday I saw a copy of ‘Boogers Are My Beat’ by Dave Barry with a seller. It was a hardcover copy and was in perfect condition that I got for just sixty rupees.

Not very long ago I had found a second copy of ‘Bright Book of Life’ by Alfred Kazin and that was sometime last year. I realized after I checked the past blogs that I had bought the first copy some time in 2015. I found the third copy last Sunday that I bought from a heap of books selling for fifty rupees. This copy too was in the same tattered condition that I had found the other copies in. I wonder how long I have to wait before I found a good copy.