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.
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