The Sunday Haul (on 20-06-2021)

When the lockdown was imposed sometime last year I was distraught for a few weeks as it meant I couldn’t go to Abids to buy books. But luckily I discovered a couple of sellers of second hand books on WhatsApp who held regular sales and I ended up buying a lot of books from those sellers. Last Saturday a large consignment of books were delivered about which I will write in the next post. On Sunday I went to Abids because the weather was perfect and the lockdown was totally lifted which meant I could browse all day if I wanted. But I usually browse for only a couple of hours and return before lunch. I found three nice titles last Sunday at Abids.

One of the first travel writers I read was Bill Aitken and ‘Seven Sacred Rivers’ was the first of his several books I read over the years. Still there were a couple of titles by Bill Aitken that I hadn’t found was ‘Footloose in the Himalaya.’ It was my first find at Abids last Sunday, and turned out to be an almost new copy that I got for just fifty rupees. The seller was someone who knew me well and always gave books to me far cheaper than to others.

There are a few classic books that I haven’t yet got around to reading and ‘Tales from the Arabian Nights’ is one of them. Though I have come across several editions of this book I haven’t found one that I really liked and wanted to read until last Sunday when I came across a beautiful copy of ‘Tales from the Arabian Nights’ edited by Andrew Lang. This book too I got very cheap. I paid only fifty rupees for it without bargaining.

Not many know it but NBT or National Book Trust is a fantastic treasure house of some really wonderful titles. I think they must have published all the famous Indian classics by Indian authors. I have bought several such NBT titles but none of them were poetry collections. Last Sunday I found a copy of ‘Both Sides of the Sky’ edited by Eunice de Souza. Published in 2008-9 it is a collection of poems by fifty eight poets starting with Nissim Ezekiel and including all the famous names of Indian poetry such as Kamala Das, A.K. Ramanujan, Adil Jussawala, Keki N.Daruwalla, Arun Kolatkar, Gieve Patel, Dom Moraes, Agha Shahid Ali, Dilip Chitre, Jayanta Mahapatra, Imtiaz Dharker, CP Surendran, Jeet Thayil, Vijay Nambisan, Menka Shivdasani, and also younger poets like Meena Kandasamy, Tishani Doshi, Anjum Hasan and many others. I was quite thrilled to find it because it was a treasure that I got for just twenty rupees!

The Sunday Haul (on 13-06-2021)

After more than a month I finally got to go to Abids. The odd relaxation timing during the lockdown here, from six in the morning to ten for a couple of weeks, and until one in the afternoon for another couple of weeks meant I could not go to Abids on Sundays. Now that the relaxation is until five in the evening I thought I’d go and check out the pavement book bazaar. I really missed going to Abids for my weekly book hunting so when I arrived at Abids and found that almost all the booksellers were at their usual places I felt pretty excited at the prospect of finding something good.

While at school and college I used to participate in quizzes where one of the questions would be who wrote ‘Thirukural’? Also in the many competitive tests I wrote there would be the same question- author of ‘Thirukural?’ I knew what it was but never got around to finding more about it. I never thought that there would be English translations of the great Tamil classic until I saw a copy of ‘Kural’ by Thruvalluvar last Sunday.

A few Sundays ago before the lockdown I had seen a copy of ‘Autumn Lights’ by Pico Iyer, that for some reason, I did not buy right away. The seller told me he had another copy so I went away thinking I would buy it another Sunday. When I looked for it again, needless to say, it was gone and the seller did not remember telling me he had two copies. Once again I felt stupid for having let go of a good book. However, last Sunday the second copy surfaced on the shelf of the seller and I grabbed it. I got it for two hundred rupees.

Next to this seller is another seller I like very much because he doesn’t have any clue about the value of the books he sells. He has only one way of pricing the books, all books big or small at the same price. Since a few weeks I have been on an Africa binge reading all books about or set in the African countries. In the past few weeks I have read ‘French Lessons in Africa’ by Peter Biddlecombe, ‘Africa’ by David Lamb, ‘When a Crocodile Eats the Sun’ by Peter Godwin, and ‘The Healing Land’ by Rupert Isaacson as part of a plan to read all Africa titles in my collection. I do not know why but I am fascinated by Africa, and want to read as many books on Africa as I can find. Luckily, the clueless seller had a copy of ‘Carcase for Hounds’ by Meja Mwangi, another title in the African Writer series. A while back I had picked up another title from this series, ‘People of the City’ by Cyprian Ekwensi. Anyway I got ‘Carcase for Hounds’ that is set in Kenya and is about the Mau Mau struggle that I am keen to know more about since I had read different versions of this struggle. I got this book for just twenty rupees.

On the way back home from Abids I stopped, as usual, to look at the titles that one of the three book sellers at Chikkadpally had on the pavement. I spotted a title I had seen earlier- ‘The House on Mall Road’ by Mohyna Srinivasan. I hadn’t felt like picking it up the last time I saw it but on Sunday I bought because I noticed it was a Penguin title and also had a blurb by Pico Iyer, a combination impossible to resist. I got it for a hundred rupees. 

An Online Haul

With the lockdown restrictions in place in Hyderabad I haven’t been able to visit Abids for almost a month now. I had this restless urge to buy books and so when there were a couple of sales of second hand books on WhatsApp groups I claimed six good titles. After a long time I felt pleased that I had bagged some really good books though it burned a bit of a hole in the pocket.

In February, 2019 while on a visit to Bengaluru along with my son, I found a copy of ‘Bang, Bang Birds’ by Adam Diment at the Blossoms store that I bought for just seventy rupees. Only weeks before I had read about Adam Diment, and I felt glad I had bought the book since I had read it after I got home and found Diment to be a terrific talent. I wished I had found more of his titles but I couldn’t until last week when I found not one but two Adam Diment titles up for sale on a WhatsApp group.

I was surprised that no one claimed ‘The Great Spy Race’ by Adam Diment and ‘The Dolly Dolly Spy’ by Adam Diment. I was quite thrilled to get these two titles.

Later in the same year Jokha Alharthi won the Man Booker Prize for her ‘Celestial Bodies’ that is still being talked about. I wanted to read it and luckily a copy was on sale on the WhatsApp group and I claimed it before anyone else could and got it. I do not know when I am going to read it but read it I will.

A long time ago I had found a copy of ‘Paraja’ by Gopinath Mohanty that I haven’t read so far because it is a large tome and I am hesitating to begin it. Sometime last year I also found another hardcover copy of another collection of stories by Gopinath Mohanty with the title ‘The Bed of Arrows’ that too I haven’t read so far.  On the WhatsApp sale I saw a copy of ‘Stories’ by Gopinath Mohanty that I claimed and also got. It is a small and slim book with just three stories- Ants; The Shelter; and The Bed of Arrows. 

For a long time I had been looking for a travelogue about the Carribean countries but couldn’t find any. When I saw ‘A Walk Around the West Indies’ by Hunter Davies on the sale I decided to claim it and to my surprise I got it because no one else had claimed it.

There’s no need to mention about Martin Amis’ writing because everyone knows how good he is. Only the other day I read an entire chapter on Martin Amis in Christopher Hitchen’s ‘Hitch-22’ where references to Martin Amis are aplenty. I have a few titles by Martin Amis including two copies of his most famous  title- ‘The War on Cliché’ the first copy of which  I found at Daryagunj in Delhi a couple of years ago. When I saw ‘The Moronic Inferno’ by Martin Amis on the sale I claimed right away and nervously prayed that no one would claim it before me because it was a non-fiction and a travelogue kind of work. To my relief I got it and a few days back when the books were delivered I saw that it has 27 essays on various places and people. This looked like a book I am going to enjoy immensely.