Last Sunday it was the day after the Ganesh procession, and the trucks with long trailers that had carried the idols for immersion were returning with the revellers playing loud music. Then there was all the trash, and stuff left in the aftermath of the procession. As I expected all the sellers hadn’t turned out so I could get over my browsing in under an hour.
But before I got to Abids I made the usual stop at the sellers in Chikkadpally. I was drawn to an attractive cover on a book with the title ‘The Cousins’ by Prema Raghunath on it. I hadn’t heard of the title and also the author seemed unknown but I bought the book anyway after I noticed that it was published by Zubaan.
The next find was at another seller in Chikkadpally who had many good titles that I was tempted to buy but instead ended up buying a copy of ‘Penguin Island’ by Anatole France. I had only read about Anatole France but this was the first book by him that I found.
At Abids where I reached about half hour later, I found a copy of ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ by Raymond Carver. It was in a heap of Rs.50 books, and I hesitated for a few moments because I already had a copy of it. But in the end, I picked it up.
The last title in Sunday’s haul wasn’t something I picked up off the pavement. A couple of weeks ago I had met Anil Battula, a bibliophile who is so passionate about books and literature that he is said to have a vast collection of Telugu books, some going back to the 1930s or earlier than that. Last Sunday, I met him again and while talking with him over chai at the Star of India café in Abids along with another bibliophile he showed me a copy of a classic titled that he had got translated into Telugu and published it. It was a copy of ‘Cycle Donga’ originally ‘Bicycle Thief’ by Cesare Zavattini (?) that was made into a movie by Vittorio de Sica, and that became a classic. It had a beautiful cover and I took it from him. I don’t know much Telugu so I do not know when I will finally get around to reading it.
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