The Sunday Haul (on 14-11-2021)

Though the Diwali shopping season is long past the regular stores in Abids that normally close on Sunday remained open last Sunday. Much later I came to know that the marriage season has begun with hundreds of marriages to be performed in the coming weeks. However, the second hand book sellers of Abids were around with their books on the pavements. Unlike the past few Sundays when I returned with hauls of more than a couple of books last Sunday I found only one good title. It was one I had seen the previous Sunday but had not bought it. 

 

In the late eighties and nineties I was an avid reader of weekly newsmagazines such as Sunday, India Today etc. Outlook wasn’t yet born so India Today ruled the roost. There was one particular journalist whose stories I used to read with great interest. It was Anita Pratap who dared to go into areas not many Indian journalists at that time went. After a few years she seemed to disappear and I had actually wondered where she was. Last Sunday I came across a nice copy of ‘Island of Blood’ by Anita Pratap that I had seen the previous Sunday but somehow had forgotten to buy. When I saw it again last Sunday I immediately grabbed it. 

 

As if the books I buy at Abids every Sunday and sometimes in bookstores is not enough I have also begun to buy books in sales held by some booksellers on their WhatsApp groups. These sales happen fairly regularly, at the rate of once every week and I am in three such groups.  Sometime last week in two such sales by two different sellers I managed to claim two nice titles before anyone did. 

 

Along with Vaikkom Mohammed Basheer MT Vasudevan Nair is one writer in Malayalam that I love to read all that they’ve written. Of course in English translation. When I saw the copy of ‘Varanasi’ by MT Vasudevan Nair on the seller’s group I thought it was a book on Varanasi. I love to read accounts of places and journeys by well-known writers so I was glad when I claimed the book and got it. But when I saw it after getting it in the mail I realized that it is a novel. I was a wee bit disappointed but anything by MT Vasudevan Nair is bound to be good, fiction or non-fiction. 

 

It was with a belated feeling of regret at having missed picking up something really good that I found a copy of ‘Monkey Grip’ by Helen Garner about a decade ago in 2012. After having seen the book for a couple of Sundays, and coming back to it again after a gap of a few weeks I finally had the sense to buy it. It turned out to be a wise decision for ‘Monkey Grip’ was a novel that haunted me for a long time. A couple of years ago ( 2018) I found another Helen Garner book at the Sunday book market that was in its last days in Darya Ganj in Delhi. It was a hardcover copy of ‘Everywhere I Look, a book of her non-fiction. 

 

I claimed ‘The Spare Room’ by Helen Garner the minute the seller opened the group for claims. Luckily for me no one seems to have heard of Helen Garner because other than I no one claimed it. 

The Sunday Haul (on 07-11-2021)

 It was one of the best hauls of the year that I landed last Sunday at Abids with a couple of titles I have not heard of and also authors I haven’t read about anywhere. Once again I was amazed at the kind of gems one finds at the second hand book market at Abids. I felt that I am extremely fortunate to live in Hyderabad where every Sunday I can visit to Abids and pick up gems to fill my bookshelves. 

 

The first title I spotted at Abids was a copy of ‘With Two Presidents’ by Major CL Datta, an aide-de-Camp to Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan who were the first two Presidents of India. I usually avoid reading such accounts since it is nothing more than ‘I saw’ and ‘I went’ and such stuff which is usually boring. But after I flipped through the pages and read a few paragraphs at random I thought it sounded interesting and so picked up the book. 

 

I love to read African literature. Ever since I read ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe I have developed this great desire to read everything written by African writers and also everything written about Africa. Though I have managed to find many such titles and read a few essays about African literature and writers I have never heard of Es’kia Mphahlele. Maybe because I haven’t read enough to know about him. Anyway last Sunday I spotted a book with a splendid cover which turned out to be a beautiful copy of ‘Down Second Avenue’ by Es’kia Mphahlele. It was a Penguin title and I knew I would buy it no matter what the prize was when I saw on the cover that inside was a Foreword by Ngugi Wa Thiong’O, another writer I live very much. I got this book for a hundred and twenty rupees. 

 

I had been seeing this copy of ‘Purity’ by Jonathan Franzen at Abids since a couple of months but did not feel like buying it because of its length. The book runs into 563 pages and I wondered if I would get the time to read such a lengthy book since many books of that length that I had picked up earlier are still sitting unread on my bookshelf. However last Sunday I decided to buy it after I found that the seller was ready to sell it to me for just fifty rupees. 

 

A couple of day back I finished reading ‘The Big Bookshelf’ by Sunil Sethi, the last title in a handful of books on books and reading by Indian writers that I had managed to collect. ‘The Groaning Shelf’ by Pradeep Sebastian, ‘Would You Like Some Bread with that Book’ by Veena Venugopal, ‘The Girl Who Ate Books’ by Nilanjana Roy, ‘Bombay, London, New York’ by Amitava Kumar, and Navtej Sarna’s ‘Second Thoughts’ and ‘Bookless in Baghdad’ by Shashi Tharoor were the titles. Just when I thought that I had read them all and did not expect there would be any more such titles I got a pleasant shock when I spotted another title at Abids last Sunday. I saw a copy of ‘50 Writers 50 Books-The Best of Indian Fiction’ edited by Pradeep Sebastian and Chandra Siddan nestled in an untidy pile of books laid out on the pavement. I was surprised to find it since I had not heard of this wonderful title before. It was a treasure, I thought, since there were fifty individual essays about fifty titles that the essayists thought were outstanding. 

 

My collection of travel titles by Indian writers is slowly growing with new titles getting added quite frequently. A couple of Sundays ago I had found two titles and last Sunday I found another title that has become a bestseller. I had been thinking of buying a new copy of ‘Truck De India’ by Rajat Ubhaykar but last Sunday I came across two copies, brand new looking, with a seller. I bought one of the better copies. 

The Sunday Haul (on 31-10-2021)

Last Sunday it was the Sunday before Diwali so all the regular stores at Abids were open. Some of the second hand booksellers had shifted from their regular spots. The shoppers mingled with the people who had come to look at the books spread out on the pavements. It was a festive scene that wasn’t there the previous Diwali because of the pandemic. The shopkeepers must have been happy so was I because I came home with five good titles that I found during the hour and half that I spent looking at all the books spread out on the pavements of Abids.

 After almost thirty years of hanging around the second hand book market in Abids every Sunday the booksellers know me well enough to show me some books that they have kept aside. Last Sunday one such seller stopped me and took out a number of books from a sack to show me. Out of those I found a nice copy of ‘The Eye of the Storm’ by Patrick White. I had seen a Patrick White title a couple of months ago but chose not to buy it because it appeared a large tome and was also not in a good condition. But the copy of ‘The Eye of the Storm’ was in a decent condition and I decided to add it to my haul.

I already have a copy of ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ by James Joyce that I had found some time ago. So I was hesitant to buy a second copy but the look of eager anticipation on the seller’s face made me buy it. This seemed a better copy than the one I already have and that I plan to give to someone who hasn’t read it.

Though I haven’t cooked more than a dozen times in my life I haven’t lost the desire to cook, and also the desire to read anything connected with cooking and food. This desire has led to me to buy almost a hundred books of recipes and food related writing some of which I am yet to read. So when I came across a copy of ‘In Buddha’s Kitchen’ by Kimberly Snow I picked it up for a closer look. It was a hardcover title to begin with and I got it for fifty rupees.

There are a couple of things in life I cannot resist doing. One is buying multiple copies of titles that I have found to be very interesting and that I greatly enjoyed reading. So last Sunday when I spotted a nice copy of ‘The Groaning Shelf’ by Pradeep Sebastian on a shelf on the pavement I couldn’t walk past without buying it. I already own three (or is it four?) copies of this wonderful book by India’s foremost bibliophile but I had to buy this one too so I ended up buying it as well. I got it for hundred rupees.

Though I am very interested in solving crossword puzzles sadly I do not find much time to do it daily. Which meansI am not very good at solving them since one can get better at solving crosswords only by doing it regularly. I keep trying to improve my skills at solving crosswords and one way is to read up on it. The last title I bought at Abids last Sunday was a copy of ‘Crosswords- How to Solve Them’ by Ruth Crisp that I got quite cheap at only twenty rupees.