Some days one simply gets very lucky. Last Sunday was one like that when I got quite lucky with the books I managed to find. If you are a kid in India you would have been told about the Panchatantra tales or read them somewhere or the other. I too read these tales in the Tinkle comics when I was in school so they are a part of life. But I haven’t read them all at one place and was actually wishing I could find all the Panchatantra tales at one place. I never found such a book until last Sunday when I saw a copy of ‘Panchatantra’ by A.N.D. Haksar with an attractive cover and published by the National Book Trust and picked it up.
I
also spotted a ‘Vintage’ title which ‘Touching the Void’ by Joe Simpson. It was
about his ‘terrifying’ adventure in the Peruvian Andes when he was presumed to
be dead. I bought it since it was described as a ‘classic’ for just eighty
rupees. It is another book on mountaineering adventures that I have bought in
addition to a few other titles that I have on my shelf waiting to be read. I don’t know when I will read all these
titles.
But
the luckiest find was for the last. I saw a book with a yellow cover and when I
took a close look I was thrilled to find that it was ‘The New York Review of
Books Anthology 1963/93’ that I picked off the pavement as fast as I could. If
finding this book was a lucky thing then getting it for an unimaginable price
was even luckier. This book was with a seller who is not at all bothered about
what he is selling and quotes really cheap rates not exceeding hundred rupees
whatever the book, and that was how I got this title for only fifty rupees.
Later
when I went through the anthology I found that it had sixteen essays many
famous names such as Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, Isaiah Berlin, Joan Didion, and others. I am super thrilled that I found this gem.
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