The Sunday Haul (on 17-10-2021)

Last Sunday was the final day of the three-day holiday spell I had. At Abids some shops were still open since the next festival, Diwali, is only two weeks away and there seems to be marriages going on so there would be a lot of people buying clothes. Even then the booksellers were in their usual numbers which was a pleasing sight. Hari came with Anjali, his daughter, and Raja, his brother-in-law and we went around looking for good titles. They went away after tea at Light of Asia and I began my hunt in earnest.

    I don’t let go of any travel title I see wherever it is, Abids or a second hand bookstore. Last Sunday at Abids my first find happened to be a travel title-‘Travels in a Dervish Cloak: Adventures in Pakistan’ by Isambard Wilkinson. I have never read an entire travel book on Pakistan though I have read books in which the author passed through Pakistan which brings to mind Paul Theroux’s ‘The Great Railway Bazaar.’ I was quite delighted to find ‘Travels in a Dervish Cloak’ and bought it right away for seventy five rupees.

The same seller had a copy of ‘The Happiness Project’ by Gretchen Rubin that I had already bought a copy sometime last year I guess. But this was too good a copy and besides I know someone who could do good to himself if he read it so I picked it up.

Sometime last year I saw a couple of Vicki Baum titles, all hardcover copies but ancient ones coming apart. I had read just around that time about Vicki Baum and wondered if I was missing something good by not picking them up. Ultimately I did not buy those copies. Last Sunday I saw a nice copy of ‘Grand Hotel’ by Vicki Baum that I picked up right away for fifty rupees.

I had seen the copy of ‘Balancing Act’ by Meera Godbole Krishnamurthy in a heap with the seller beside Bata the previous Sunday. But I did not buy it because I had bought six books by then and did not want to add another book to the haul. I told myself that the book would be there the coming Sunday and I was right because it was there in the pile standing out because of the unusual cover. One reason I wanted to buy it was because it was a Penguin and the other reason was that I hadn’t heard of the author before and therefore was curious to know what it was all about. I got it for fifty rupees.

About a year ago I discovered Robert D Kaplan when I found a copy of ‘Balkan Ghosts’ that I read immediately afterwards and felt pleased that I had found a good writer. Since then I had been on the lookout for more of Kaplan’s titles but I couldn’t find anything until last Sunday. A few minutes after picking up ‘Balancing Act’ from a pile I decided to check out the titles on a shelf that the same seller had. I felt a jolt of thrill when I saw the name Robert D. Kaplan on the spine of a book laid flat. I took it out and saw that it was a hardcover copy of ‘The Return of Marco Polo’s World’ by Robert D. Kaplan. It was in a very good condition and I got it for a hundred rupees.