Last Sunday I felt winter has made its appearance in Hyderabad. The sunlight in the morning felt mellow and provided a mild warmth. It felt good to be at Abids looking for titles to pick up.
I had read two novels by Malayatoor Ramakrishan earlier and though I found them to be average I couldn’t help picking up another title of his just for the cover. I found a copy of ‘Five Cents of Land’ by Malayatoor Ramakrishnan at one of the sellers near GPO from where I began.
Of late I’ve begun to be taking an abnormal interest in history, especially history of the country and have picked up several titles about what had happened in the past. The time before Indian got independence and its aftermath are traumatic and when I found a hardcover copy of ‘Mountbatten and the Partition of India’ by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre I couldn’t resist buying it after I noticed that the previous owner had pasted newscuttings about Mahatma Gandhi, Edwina Mountbatten from English and Urdu newspapers dating back to the 1980s. He had also underlined some passages, wrote in the margins, and in one of the front pages had written ‘banned in Pakistan’. I wonder who it was as there was no name and only a signature dated 14th July 1982 at New Delhi. I would have loved to know him.
Just before leaving I walked across the road near the GPO where an old seller had a few books, a place where I earlier had found some good titles. Last Sunday I found two good titles, the first of which was a nice copy of ‘Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine’ by Tom Wolfe.
The second title was even more interesting. It was a copy of ‘Confessions of a Story-teller’ by Paul Gallico, and the subtitle says ‘unlocks the secrets of a writer’s mind. It is a book about the story behind the twenty stories in the book, and how he got the ideas for the stories, and also what compelled him to write them down.
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