It takes much to stop me from visiting the secondhand book market that comes up every Sunday at Abids. It has become a deep-rooted habit that’s just not possible for me to give up. So last Sunday too I was at Abids as usual right after breakfast.
I like to travel and though I haven’t travelled much in my own country I wish to travel somewhere abroad. I hadn’t any opportunity to go to another country and I don’t think the opportunity will come unless I create it. A couple of years later I will be retiring so I am thinking of travelling to a country like Vietnam and also Cambodia, if possible. I want to see Vietnam because I have read about how the United States waged a war against this tiny nation and lost. Cambodia simply because I want to see the temples at Angkor Wat and also go around the country where millions lost their lives during the reign of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. I don’t know if I can make the trip but I dream of it though I have no idea about either country. Luckily last Sunday at Abids the first book I saw was an old copy of a Lonely Planet book- South-East Asia on a Shoestring that I eagerly picked up though it was a twenty-year old edition.
Though I am not computer savvy I know enough about how computers changed the lives of people who made them. When I saw a copy of ‘Accidental Empires’ by Robert X. Cringely I read on the cover that it was about the Silicon Valley and how they made their fortunes. It sounded interesting and so I picked it up though I have no idea when I will find the time to read this book that runs into exactly three hundred and fifty pages. It is dated of course but I want to read it. I got this book for hundred rupees.
The next find was a book I already own. I have all the three titles in Chinua Achebe’s trilogy beginning with ‘Things Fall Apart.’ But when I saw a nice copy ‘A Man of the People’ by Chinua Achebe with a cover different from the one on the copy I own I couldn’t resist buying it. I bought it for eighty rupees only.
What kind of crazy bibliophile I am you will wonder when you find out that I have six copies of ‘All About H. Hatterr’ by G.V. Desani on my bookshelf. Anyone with a normal brain will not buy another copy even though it is given free to him but since I love this classic like anything I bought my seventh copy when I saw it at a seller near the GPO at Abids.
In a couple of weeks from now I will be turning sixty, something that I am yet to believe. A lot of physical changes may have taken in my body mentally I haven’t aged much. ‘The Challenge of Aging’ John A.B. McLeish suggests ‘Ulyssean Paths to Creative Living’ that I want to learn about. I hope it is as good as the blurbs say it is. I got it for hundred rupees at a seller in Chikkadpally on the way home from Abids.
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