Last Sunday it was a bit warm after a week of relatively cool weather. My first stop was at Chikkadpally where I found a beautiful copy of 'Tales from Kathasaritsagara' translated by Arshia Sattar. I was looking for something like this, a collection of ancient tales and so grabbed it. I got it for two hundred rupees, a bit high but then it was a beautiful copy.
It was the usual Sunday morning routine except for a small change. None of the usual friends I meet at Abids turned up so I did the browsing all by myself. Before I reached Abids I got down at Chikkadpally as usual where I found two good titles.
The first find was a nice copy of 'The Loser' by Thomas Bernhard that had a striking cover. I think I already have some title it not this by Thomas Bernhard that I had found sometime last year. I have to check my notes and confirm it. I got this book for eighty rupees only. With the first find a good title I set off hoping to find more. I just now checked my notes and realized that I had found three titles by Thomas Berhard. One was 'Gargoyles' and the others were 'Gathering Evidence' and also 'Corrections; by Thomas Bernhard and that I had not read them yet.
The second find was a copy of 'Light at the Edge of the World' by Wade Davis that I knew I had to buy. Not only the cover pulled me to it the fact that it was a sort of travel title by an anthropologist convinced me to buy it.
I have this habit of buying multiple copies of titles I already have. So when I saw a wonderful and almost brand new copy of 'Behind the Wall: A Journey Through China' by Colin Thubron I picked it up though I have a copy of it on my bookshelf that I can see even as I type this blog post. The earlier copy I had found long back and was a good enough copy though I have yet to read it. I got it for eighty rupees.
I had seen a lot with a seller that contained quite a few books of history and literature. I had seen them the previous Sunday and had thought I would check again this Sunday. One of the titles I wanted to buy was gone and the other I had thought of buying was a copy of 'History of the Pelopennosian War' by Thucydides that I picked up. I have a faint memory of buying a copy of this same title somewhere a long time back but since I wasn't sure I picked up this copy as well.
Once again I came across a copy of a book that I had found a long back and that which I had given away after reading it. But when I saw that the copy of 'Road Runner' by Dilip D'Souza that I spotted was a copy signed by the author I picked it up. I got it for a hundred rupees.
It was a pretty hot Sunday last Sunday in Hyderabad. It is a sign of how hot the coming weeks are going to be since it is not even officially summer yet. However since it has become a difficult habit to shake off I set out for Abids soon after breakfast. The haul last Sunday turned out to be titles I already have on my shelves.
The previous Sunday I had seen a copy of 'The Imaginary Girlfriend: A Memoir' by John Irving but did not buy it since I had bought a copy long back. I had looked for it during the week as I needed to refer to it for a writing project I was working on but couldn't find it anywhere on my shelves. So last Sunday when I found it at the same place I picked it up. The only difference was that it had been in a Rs.50 the previous Sunday but last Sunday it was in a Rs.30 heap.
Down the road with another seller at Chikkadpally I spotted a copy of 'From Heaven Lake' by Vikram Seth that too I already have read having found it a couple of years ago. But somehow I couldn't walk away leaving it behind because it was a good copy and so took it. I got this title for fifty rupees only.
The Haul at Nagpur
Last week I was in Nagpur for two days. A college friend I've known since 1981 had invited me to his son's marriage and warned me that I had to come or else... Anyway, I had been looking for an excuse to leave Hyderabad for a couple of days so this came as a blessing. I was told that there were no proper second-hand bookstores in Nagpur but there were some sellers on the pavements on either side of a flyover at Zero Mile. I decided to check them out and was a bit excited wondering what I would find though I had no high expectations.
On Friday after the marriage was over in the morning I set off for Zero Mile in an electric auto. The driver, an old gentleman, asked me where I was from and I told him I was from Hyderabad. I also told him I was looking for the booksellers. So he kindly stopped at the spot where the sellers had their stalls. I found nothing on one side of the flyover and then crossed over to the other side. In a stall I asked to see inside and they let me in. There was a tall pile of books on a shelf and right on the top I spotted the title 'The Half Known Life' and felt excited when I saw the name 'Pico Iyer' beside it. It was a hardcover copy and somehow I was not aware of this title.
It was a sombre Sunday morning as I woke up to the news of the bombings in Iran. Somehow it was all very disturbing and so in that mood I set out for Abids not really wishing to find anything. I went there just out of habit. It wasn't too hot though we are already in March. Also in the news was the forecast by the weather department that it was going to be a very, very hot summer over here.
As usual I began with the sellers in Chikkadpally and the first title in the Sunday haul was a hardcover copy of 'India: Social Structure' by M.N. Srinivas that I got for fifty rupees. It is previously published as the first chapter in Gazeteer of India.
Then at Abids a book with a bright red cover caught my eye. It was a copy of 'Red Star Over India' by Jan Myrdal. The book is an analysis of the Naxalite movement in India by Jan Myrdal who is a Swedish author, leftist-political writer and columnist according to the bio on the back cover of the book. I bought it for the cover alone.
Further on I found a copy of Diary of a Malayali Madman by N. Prabhakaran Tr. Jayasree Kalathil. I haven't heard about Prabhakaran earlier and was curious to know more about the novel and also the author. I got it for a hundred rupees.
Then the next find was a most interesting title. Only the previous day I was going through my notebooks while working on a writing project. In a notebook I maintained in 1998 I had read about the National Seminar on Travel Writing that I had attended in March 1998 at the University of Hyderabad. I had gone there to listen to Bill Aitken whose books I had read a couple of months earlier. At this session one of the coordinators was Sachidananda Mohanty, the academic. Incidentally the book I found last Sunday 'Travel Writing and the Empire' ed Sachidananda Mohanty was a product of the proceedings of the seminar. I was surprised to read that the Seminar was held in 1999 when in fact it was in 1998. I don't know how they got it wrong.
But the most interesting title of the day was the slim copy of 'Life and Learning' that I spotted with a seller near Bata. on the cover was a shelf of book that caught my attention. It was a textbook meant for the I Year UG Bcom/BCom/BBA students of Karnatak University according to the blurb on the back cover. It had some wonderful essays and poems. I was quite excited to find it also had an extract from 'Decolonising the Mind' by Ngugi wa Thiong' O that I had been trying to find since a long time. This slim and lovely copy with wonderful print was by Orient Blackswan
