With only a few regular shops open for the Ramzan shoppers the second-hand booksellers who set shop before such shops in Abids shifted elsewhere last Sunday. Many of them were at their regular spots and I was glad to see them again after the previous Sunday’s no-show. It is so comforting to be among familiar surroundings and to see so many books spread out on the pavements waiting to be bought. It was a warm morning and there were not many people other than the regulars browsing there. In the couple of hours I was at Abids I picked up four good titles.
I had read about ‘The Vegetarian’ by Han Kang when it was in the news for being shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2016. It was a slim book of less than two hundred pages and I got it for just eighty rupees. Now with the lockdown in force I am planning to read it one of these days.
A long time back, more than ten years ago I had found a hardcover copy of ‘Travels’ by Michael Crichton at Abids. I had also read it and forgot all about it until I found another copy last Sunday. This was a paperback copy though but somehow I wanted to read it again so I bought it. I paid fifty rupees for it.
Again, long back, sometime in the early nineties I guess I had attended a talk in Hyderabad Central University where Bill Aitken too had come. I remember taking his autograph too on a notebook that I cannot find now. I loved his ‘Seven Sacred Rivers’ that I still have somewhere in the house. I don’t have ‘Travels by a Lesser Line’ by Bill Aitken that I saw with a bookseller who gave it to me for only twenty rupees.
After I had found ‘Look at Me’ by Anita Brookner sometime ago and read I wanted to read all the books she had written. I found a couple of her titles afterwards but ‘Hotel du Lac’ still eludes me. I saw a copy of ‘The Rules of Engagement’ by Anita Brookner that I got for eighty rupees. It was a nice copy and I was glad I spotted it half-hidden under other books.
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