The Sunday Haul (on 14-07-2024)

 

t was cloudy in the morning when I set out for Abids last Sunday. Since it looked like it might rain any time I carried an umbrella, a small Popy brand that I had bought at Ooty on my last visit there. It had been a long time since I had visited the second hand goods market that comes between Madina and Charminar on Sunday morning so I planned to go there before going to Abids. Years ago I had found a beautiful Brahmam fountain pen with a seller that wrote so well that I felt very lucky to have found it. Unfortunately someone stole it at my office in the Secretariat where I was posted at that time. I thought maybe I might get lucky and find a similar pen. I did not find one like it but I found a nice-looking black fountain pen that had ‘Louis Marx’ on the steel rim on the cap. I have never heard of the brand and there wasn’t any information about it online. I got it for two hundred and fifty rupees.

 

Then I hopped into a city bus and reached Abids. I found a copy of ‘Grandmother’s Tale’ by RK Narayan that seemed to be a first edition published in 1972 by RK Narayan’s own publishing house- Indian Thought Publications. It was a paperback copy in good condition though the previous owner had written on the inside page not only his name and also his postal address but also the date when he bought it.  The only detail he seems to have forgotten was to write down his phone number. I got it for fifty rupees.

 

Just before going in for the mandatory chai at Star of India café I checked out the titles with the seller beside the café. I found a nice copy of ‘Stein on Writing’ by Sol Stein that I got for hundred rupees. I already have a copy of it but since I cannot resist any title about writing I picked it up. I met my friend Danny who was also browsing at the same place and later we sat down and had a chat over chai.

 

At Chikkadpally I found a copy of ‘The World of Psmith’ by PG Wodehouse that was an omnibus edition of the three Psmith titles- ‘Psmith in the City’, ‘Psmith Journalist’, and ‘Leave it to Psmith’ that I want to read again since it had been almost decades that I had read them last. Surprisingly the seller gave it to me for just hundred rupees though I was expecting him to ask for nothing less than two hundred rupees.