Vinod Ekbote

Another New Joint in Jubilee Hills

2012-01-31T15:15:00.001+05:30

Life has a mysterious way of bringing to one’s attention the very things one is not interested in and trying to avoid. Take for example, my own keen and undying interest in the restaurant scene in the Jubilee Hills/Banjara Hills area. I am actually tired ( and also envious) of reading about new hotels coming up there that I have decided not to blog about it here but it seems something I am destined to do considering not many people are doing it.

In Jubilee Hills there are so many new restaurants coming up so regularly that I won’t be surprised if the Government notifies the entire Jubilee Hills/Banjara Hills area as an SEZ- Special Eating Zone. I have lost count of the number of hotels opening in that locality that I have lost count. Just when I was wondering when the next joint would open came the news that another hotel has just come up in that area which I came to know only recently.

As I said earlier, life has a certain way of bringing things to our attention when we least expect them. So about two weeks ago I attended the Hyderabad Literary Festival hoping to indulge myself in some literary fare. I actually paid five hundred bucks and registered for the event like I had planned to attend for all the three days. After registration I was given a small cloth bag that contained i) a cheap ball point pen ii) a small note book iii) the January 2012 issue of C6 (Channel Six) magazine and iv) the three day program brochure. It was in C6 that I read that Jubilee Hills crowd had another new joint to go to and eat or do whatever they do in such places.

The new restaurant, I read, was ‘Salz’ and located at Road No. 92, Jubilee Hills which was another piece of news to me because I never knew there were so many roads in Jubilee Hills. Some day I plan to undertake some sort of an expedition and spend a lot of time getting acquainted with the locality because, if any place has roads beginning from Road No. 1 to Road No. 92 then it must be worth checking out in detail.

Anyway, yesterday again there was another item about ‘Salz’ in the ‘Metro Plus’ supplement of The Hindu. It is supposed to offer ‘Transcontinental’ cuisine whatever that means. The reviewer had many good things to say about the food there, describing everything in superlatives, which is exactly what one tends to do if one is not paying for all the stuff that one is generously helping oneself to. I say this from experience, honestly.

Even if I began, say starting tomorrow and assuming I can afford it, to have dinner once a week at each and every joint in Jubilee Hills I doubt if I would ever be able to go through all the joints before I retire, which is a good ten years from now. I know there will be at least one person in JH/BH who might have had at least one meal at each of the restaurants in that area and I won’t be surprised if he/she has an appetite bigger than the Jubilee Hills area and is never at home at mealtime.

The Recent Haul

2012-01-27T14:43:00.001+05:30

It was another of those weeks when books seem to pop up wherever I went. It escaped my mind to write here about the book I found the previous Sunday. I had found a book that I already had but had given away for reason I cannot comprehend now. I had found Edward Abbey’s ‘Desert Solitaire’ a couple of years ago at Abids. When I picked it up I was not aware that it was a well known title. Only after I bought it and also read it did I discover that it was in a list of top travel titles on World Hum, the travel site. But a couple of months ago I gave it away unwittingly and realized it too late. But last Sunday I found a different copy of the same book and surprisingly with the same seller and at the same price i.e., Twenty rupees.

Sometime during the week I happened to drop in at Frankfurt Books at Begumpet. There I saw two Robert B Parker’s Spenser titles- ‘Pastime’ and ‘Cold Service’ that I wasted no time in buying at Rs 50 each which was a bit high considering the price at which I got another Spenser title this Sunday. Last Sunday, Uma who was with me spotted another Spenser title- ‘Double Deuce’ for which he paid only twenty rupees. What was surprising was that this copy of Double Deuce was an almost brand new copy with the jacket intact. Uma was generous enough to give the book to me. Thanks, Uma.

Then on Friday last I dropped in at the Best Books sale at YMCA for a final see as I thought that 26th Jan was the last day of the sale. I was surprised to discover that the sale has been extended upto 5th February. If you haven’t been there go now before I pick up all the good books. I saw a lot of good books but they were all priced above a hundred and fifty rupees. I thought I wouldn’t be able to find any book for less than hundred rupees but I was wrong. I saw Ashokamitran’s ‘The Eighteenth Parallel’ and was surprised that it was priced at only forty rupees. But the real surprise was finding it was a copy signed by the author, Ashokamitran, himself to someone.

I leafed through the book and found that it was a story about the events that rocked Hyderabad around 1947 during the Nizam’s rule. There were many familiar places like Monda, Keyes Girls High School and such places mentioned in the book. I had not known that Hyderabad featured in novels other than those written by Narendra Luther. ‘The Eighteenth Parallel’ was translated into English from Tamil was Gomathi Narayanan. According to the copy on the back cover TEP is considered one of Ashokamitran’s finest works of fiction and it also won the Ilakkia Chintanai Book-of-the-Year Award in 1977. It was also chosen by National Book Trust of India for translation into several Indian Languages. I wonder if there is a Telugu translation of this book. However, I am extremely pleased with myself for spotting this book which I plan to read right away.

Another book that came to me recently was Dr Parchuri Gopala Krishna’s book on Telugu Films, Story and Screenplays that Srinath lent to me when I met him at HLF. I have already begun to read it and there is a lot of fascinating stuff about the early years of film making not only in the country but also in Tollywood.

Sidin Vadukut’s ‘God Save the Dork’ – A Review; The Funniest Book I’ve Ever Read

2012-01-24T15:24:00.001+05:30

For quite a long time I had been despairing if I’d ever come across a book by an Indian writer that’s really, really funny. Maybe there are some writers who others consider funny but I haven’t come across any such book. One recent writer who has made me laugh really hard is Sidin Vadukut in his ‘Dork’ books, two of which have come out. Reading his two books – ‘The Incredible Adventures of Robert Einstein Verghese’ and ‘God Save the Dork’ has made me feel that at last we have a truly funny writer.

I do not remember exactly how I came across Sidin Vadukut’s first book ‘The Incredible Adventures of Robert Einstein Verghese’ but I did buy it at a bookstore. It is a funny book loaded with lots of deadly lines that made me double up with laughter while reading. It is about a corporate guy ‘Einstein’ who has some really hilarious adventures you can never have enough of. Everything in the book- the situations, the characters, especially of ‘Einstein’, and the lines are extremely funny. After I finished reading it I had to wait for some time for the second title ‘God Save the Dork’ which I bought and finished reading recently.

‘God Save the Dork’ is funnier than ‘The Incredible Adventures of Robert Einstein Verghese’. It takes ‘Einstein’s adventures to a higher level and is so hilarious that I had to put aside the book in order to collapse on the floor and roll with laughter till my sides ached. You have to read it yourself to know what I mean. His interaction with his girl, Gouri, one of his bosses, Rahul Gupta and others, his Mallu jokes especially about Mohanlal, and also Raveena Tandon, are incredibly funny. There’s also some familiar stuff in GSTD, in that one of the characters is a Telugu guy and there’s mention of Chiru (Chiranjeevi, the actor) in the book.

I am happy I read both these books by Sidin Vadukut and now I am eagerly waiting for the final book in the Dork Trilogy. Sidin Vadukut is one writer you shouldn’t miss reading if you llike zany, irreverent humor. In my view he is on par with Dave Barry, Bill Bryson and the likes. The back cover has Hindustan Times saying the book is ‘Hysterically Funny’ an opinion I completely agree with. If you don’t find the book funny then maybe you ought to get your head examined.

At the Hyderabad Literary Festival 2012

2012-01-20T12:41:00.000+05:30

The second edition of the Hyderabad Literary Festival took place from Monday to Wednesday (16-18 January, 2012) this week at the Taramati Baradari. Ever since I missed attending the first edition of HLF in December 2010 I have been planning to attend it this year. Though I couldn’t go on all three days I was present on the first and last days of the Fest. Since it was an optional holiday for the Government types I availed at and attended the festival. I applied for leave to attend on the last day. Due to work pressures I had to miss the second day which was actually a full day which had a lot of exciting sessions.

Anyway, attending the HLF was like getting hit with a blast of fresh air after spending two days in the company of so many towering literary personalities. I was very excited the day before and planned with Hari to meet up early on Monday morning, have breakfast at Minerva and be at Taramati Baradari right on time for the inaugural session. It went right as planned and we got to the venue on the dot and found the registration had begun. I too registered shelling out five hundred bucks and ticked off the sessions I wanted to attend. After a while the HLF was formally inaugurated by Gulzar, Pavan K. Varma and Chandana Khan, a senior IAS officer in the State Government.

After the inaugural, the first session I attended was ‘Salaam Hyderabad’ in which Hari was a participant along with Meena Alexander, Krishna Shastri Devulapally and Vamsi Juloori. They talked about Hyderabad, their memories of Hyderabad and the city in their novels. It was an interesting discussion but it could have been more interesting if it had been allowed to go a bit longer and if the moderator had been someone who was actually still living in Hyderabad.

Another session I found interesting was the one with Kiran Nagarkar who made a feisty defence of his novels- ‘Cuckold’ and ‘Ravan and Eddie.’ He brushed off what the critics and opponents of his novels say about them. The next session I sat through was ‘Translating Bharat’ held in the Kohinoor Hall. It was interesting to learn the difficulties translators have to face while translating works in regional languages into other regional languages and also into English. There was so much I learnt from listening to senior translators and writers like Prof Sachidananda Mohanty, Prof Udaya Narayana Singh, Jeelani Bano and someone young and intelligent like the Gujarati poet and translator Dr Hemang Desai.

Then the other session was the one with Amish Tripathi, Indu Sundaresan and Jaishree Mishra, writers of historical fiction in conversation with Dr T. Vijay Kumar. I found nothing very interesting or new in what they had to say about their books or the process of getting published.

At lunch under a shamiana it was a sight to watch people, especially youngsters, try to get Gulzar’s autograph and also get photographed with him. It gave me an idea and I bought ‘Raavi Paar’, a collection of 27 short stories by Gulzar at the bookstore outside. I had to wait a long time to get his signature on the book but I was glad I did it. Though I had planned to read Srilal Shukla’s ‘Raag Darbari’ in Hindi this year, I guess ‘Raavi Paar’ could substitute for it. It would be the first book in Hindi that I would read. I had never read anything longer than a poem in Hindi. Reading Hindi would be more difficult for me than reading Telugu since I read Telugu newspapers and occasional official stuff.

Apart from Hari, there were a few other book loving friends of mine. There was Srinath and also Rasana. I got to meet the Devulapalli couple- Krishna Shastri Devulapally and his wife, Chitra. Devulapalli is the author of ‘Ice Boys in Bell Bottoms’ whose launch I had attended a couple of months ago. There were other familiar faces- there was Sridala Swamy, Amita Talwar, Shankar Melkote and others but not many regulars who normally turn up at book launches and other literary events.

Anyway, it was an interesting first day though I did not stay till the end of the day for Pavan Varma’s book launch. I stayed back for the awards session where the renowned poet Adil Jussawala gave away the Muse India prizes to three young poets- Anindita Sen Gupta, Semeen Ali and Amrita Nair.

I tried to think of some excuses to attend the second day also but I couldn’t take the day off. On the last and final day too I teamed up with Hari and got to the venue by ten in the morning. We sat in the session with Suniti Namjoshi. I was not aware that she was in the IAS before she left it. It was an interesting and illuminating talk by her that made me decide to read at least one book by her. Unfortunately, Mark Tully had not come and I could only catch the second part of the session titled ‘Adapting to India’. It was followed by a reading of fiction by K.Srilata, Priti Aisola, Swati Chawla, Sagarika Chakraborty and Sudha Balagopal. It was interesting to listen to different voices taking us into different landscapes and stories. Two of the writers I knew, K.Srilata read out passages from her latest fiction work ‘A Table for Four’ and Priti Aisola read out from her third book in the making.

The venue was teeming with excited school children who had come to participate in a creative writing event. However, there was sparse attendance at other events especially in the sessions in Urdu and Hindi later in the afternoon. After lunch I sat in a session where four Urdu writers- read out ‘nazms’ and ‘shairi’. This was one of the most interesting sessions I had attended and I wish I could have stayed back for the ‘Mushaira’ that was slated after tea. But we reluctantly left at three in the afternoon mind filled with all that we had sat through.

It was a fine show put up by the Muse India team comprising of GSP Rao, Dr. T. Vijaya Kumar and others. They deserve to be congratulated for the successful conduct of the event despite things being what they are in Hyderabad.

Food and the Hyderabadi

2012-01-17T21:30:00.001+05:30

Sometimes when I am on the road in Hyderabad, stuck in a traffic jam, fuming inside as I watch all the stupid drivers around me, I wonder why we haven’t yet lost our mental balance and started beating up each other on the heads. The answer came the other day when I was driving past an Irani joint. I then had a ‘Zen’ moment and the following realization: Were it not for Irani chai and biryani more than half the Hyderabadis would have been raving lunatics by now. It may sound like an exaggeration but I am sure these foods and beverages typical of Hyderabad play a role in helping us maintaining our sanity.

It is quite evident how profoundly chai and biryani affects Hyderabadis. Ask anyone who’s just had a cup of chai or had biryani either for lunch or dinner how they feel and you will get the answer and a lot more. Even just watching the dreamy expressions on the faces of those coming out of Irani hotels will give a clue as to their state of mind. It is quite impossible to pick up a fight with anyone coming out Irani joints in Hyderabad. On the other hand they will endeavour to calm you down with their friendliness and their almost saintly advice or a short couplet on the thing troubling you whether it is a parking problem or anything else.

Biryani and Irani chai are what makes the Hyderabadis what they are. That being so, Hyderabadis will do anything for biryani and chai. But the problem is that no self respecting Hyderabadi will agree to let you pay for his biryani or chai if you happen to be an outsider. He will insist on paying it himself unless he happens to be someone from Jubilee Hills. Anyway, on the rare occasion when you are lucky enough to be treating a Hyderabadi to biryani, be prepared. A Hyderabadi thus fed will express his undying gratitude to you all his life. He will not forget you so easily.

In fact if you want to get anything done by a Hyderabadi the trick is to treat him to biryani or chai. He will do anything you ask him, even jump into the Hussain Sagar if you so much as give him a hint. But if you happen to be one of those rare birds who can’t stand the smell of biryani or the taste of Irani chai and say so in the presence of a Hyderabadi then you’ve had it. He won’t argue with you or shout at you like residents of other cities because he is too refined. He has other ways of expressing his displeasure. He will simply get on the road and then drive you crazy.

The Sunday Haul and Another Find

2012-01-13T13:18:00.000+05:30

Since the past three Sundays there’s been a book I’ve hesitated to buy though every instinct within told me to pick it up. The name of the author was new to me but the title on the cover suggested it could be a good book. Even a blurb on the back about the dialogue in the book akin to that of Elmore Leonard did not convince me to take it. Finally, on Sunday unable to resist it I picked up Harry Dolan’s ‘Bad Things Happen’ for only twenty rupees. Later when I searched online for reviews of this book I was glad I bought the book.

The other day I read on World Hum that ‘The Man Within My Head’ Pico Iyer’s latest book was out. I read the review and wondered when I’d be able to read it. It would be impossible to find the book in the bookstores in India I guess though I haven’t been to any bookstore to check it out. I do not think I will find a used copy anywhere so soon. However I do plan to buy a new copy as soon as I can afford it.

On my previous visit to the Best Books' sale of second hand books at YMCA, Secunderabad last week, I had kept aside Dave Barry’s ‘Dave Barry’s ‘History of the Millenium So Far’ with the intention of buying at a later date just before the sale closes. However, I couldn’t stop worrying about that book. I kept imagining that some crazy Dave Barry fan like me would spot the book kept under the counter and cajole the guy to sell it to him. It has been quite a long time since I had found a new Dave Barry title so I did not want to miss it for anything in the world. Despite tight finances I rushed to the sale and breathed a sigh of relief when I found that nothing of the sort I had imagined had taken place. I picked up the book but it set me back by Rs 195. However I do not regret it and feel rather lucky since it is a hard cover copy and appears almost new.

Another Book Sale and Another Book on My Shelf

2012-01-11T11:02:00.001+05:30

Barely have two whole weeks passed since the Hyderabad Book Fair concluded than there was the news of yet another second hand book sale. On Friday evening I got a message from Best Books that they have a sale of second hand books from 6th of Jan. Any news of book sales is enough for me to drop everything and rush to the venue which is what I did on Saturday. I found that compared to a previous sale which was perhaps sometimes in November the books on sale were almost brand new. It was also a new collection of books many of which were titles I hadn’t seen before.

There were nearly half a dozen titles of Dave Barry, all of them hard cover and practically new. There was only one title I did not have – Dave Barry’s History of the Millenium (So Far)’ which I asked to be kept aside to be picked up later.

There were a lot of books that I wanted to buy but I did not have enough money to buy all of them. I picked up just one title –‘Best American Travel Writing 2002’ that I got for Rs 150. The collection is edited by Frances Mayes who has written the bestseller ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ and has twenty six travel articles. I know only a few of them- P J O’rourke, Edward Hoagland, Adam Gopnik and David Sedaris and the rest are new names to me. However, all the articles appear good to me and I cannot wait to begin reading them one a day.

I plan to go there again sometime after a couple of days and after devising ways of justifying to myself about buying the books I want to buy. If I don’t buy them now it will be difficult for me to remain sane until the next sale which is not likely to happen until June at least. This sale is until the 26th of January at the YMCA Secunderabad and is worth a visit.

The Sunday Haul and Other Stuff About Books

2012-01-06T11:22:00.001+05:30

When compared to one of the previous years last year’s total haul at 103 books was a small one. In 2007 perhaps the number of books I had bought touched almost 200. I hope in 2012 I am not tempted to buy more than thirty or forty books. However, I missed writing about the last book of 2011 that I had picked up on Christmas Day. I found only one book and that was journalist Sarah Turnbull’s ‘Almost French.’ It is a memoir of her life in Paris after falling in love and marrying a Frenchman. I picked up this book when I saw I could get it for only twenty bucks though I was unwilling to add any more books to my 100 + list.

On the books front 2012 began on a good note. Last Sunday which turned out to the first day of 2012 I arrived at Abids repeatedly telling myself that I wouldn’t pick up any books and merely look around. But I found it impossible to prevent myself and ended up buying two books. The first book I picked up was a medical memoir that I find difficult to resist reading for some reason I cannot fathom. It was Jonathan Kaplan’s ‘Dressing Station’ that I got for only twenty rupees. I hope to read it sometime soon and not let it sit on the shelf for years together which is what sometimes happens to a few of the books I buy.

The second book was by an author I like to read because of the style and also the content. Sometime back I had found a novel by Joan Didion- ‘Run River’ (haven’t read it yet) and this Sunday I found another of her novel- ‘Play As It Lays’ that I got for the ridiculous price of ten rupees. I still have to read other books by Joan Didion that I had picked up earlier, especially ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ and ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ that I have two copies of- one a hardcover and the other a paperback. I’m hoping I can find her ‘Blue Nights’ that has been written about quite a lot in several places. Sometime in this month itself I plan to begin reading ‘slouching Towards Bethlehem.’

On my way to Abids in the morning I check out the booksellers on the left side of the road at Chikkadpally. On my way back home I check out the books with the sellers on the other side. Later in the afternoon while returning home I happened to check out one such seller at Chikkadpally who sometimes turns up with a good book. I found a nice Penguin edition copy of Somerset Maugham’s ‘Summing Up.’ When the guy said he’d give it for thirty rupees I grabbed it though I have about two copies of the same book at home. It is not easy to get the book at that price.

Then while buying a Telugu newspaper at a newspaper stand I noticed a new, glossy magazine called ‘Fountain Ink.’ It was the size of a small notebook and the quality of the paper was very good. It was priced at Rs 20 but that wasn’t the reason I bought it. There was an article on Shrilal Shukla’s ‘Raag Darbari’ which is one book I want to reread this year, in Hindi, if I find a copy somewhere.

WHAT THE MEMBERS OF THE SECUNDERABAD CLUB READ AND THE LITERARY REVIEW ETC

I had thought that since the first Sunday of the month also happens to be the first day of 2012 the Literary Review in The Hindu would be something special. But I was disappointed to find nothing of that sort. However, it was as good as it always is and I spent an enjoyable hour reading some of the articles in it.

A couple of days ago I happened to be in the room of one of my bosses who happens to be a member of Secunderabad Club. On his table was some sort of a flyer from the Club and I opened it out of curiosity. Inside was a list of all the books the Secunderabad Club had bought in the month of November for its library. It was quite a lengthy list but I do not remember all the books there. I read that the Club had purchased Murakami’s ‘IQ84’, Hari Kunru’s ‘Gods Without Men’, Michael Ondaatje’s ‘The Cat’s Table’ and James Patterson’s ‘Don’t Blink’ and other books. I am glad some members of Secunderabad Club actually read since I was always under the impression that they spend their time playing golf, cards, and drinking. But, are they lucky.

In today’s (Thursday) Metro Plus supplement of The Hindu I read Aparna Karthikeyan’s column which had a list of all the travel classics. There was Robert Byron’s ‘Oxiana’, Paul Theroux’s ‘The Pillars of Hercules’, John Steinbeck’s ‘Travels With Charley’, Bruce Chatwin’s ‘In Patagonia’, Peter Mayle’s ‘A Year in Provence’ in the list along with books by other writerss I haven’t heard about. Except ‘Oxiana’ that I do not have I have the other three books in my collection. I haven’t really heard about Robert Berendt and AA Gill but now I am going to look for their books. Oddly enough but there was no mention of some great travel writers like Pico Iyer, Wilfred Thesiger, Ryszard Kapuscinski or Jan Morris either. Paul Theroux’s ‘Pillars of Hercules’ is one book I am desperately looking for in addition to his ‘Fresh Air Fiend’ that I found and missed sometime ago.

All this in just the first week of the new year!

On Cyclone Watch and a Dramatic Rescue

2012-01-03T12:04:00.002+05:30

A Happy New Year to You All

Quite ironically even as we were putting the final touches to a report on the drought in the State to be sent to the Central Government there came the warning from the Met Department that a major cyclone was on its way. Initially it was forecast that it was only a deep depression but later the warning was upgraded to a cyclone called ‘Thane’. As soon as the warning bulletins began to arrive we started our own preparations. When the warning bulletins said that the cyclone could grow into a severe cyclonic storm with wind speeds going up to 150 kmph we decided to go on round the clock alert which meant night duties for all of us.

I was on night duty on Thursday night and went home for just an hour for dinner and a change of clothes before coming back to office. Until midnight everything seemed normal while I sat working on a drought report. Just when I decided to lie down the fax machine spat out a message from a coastal district. The message said that six fishing boats with thirty fishermen were missing at sea and sought assistance from the Navy for large vessels as Coast Guard ships were unable to do so. The procedure here is to send a message to the Ministry of Home Affairs Control Room in Delhi to direct the Navy. The District administration had approached the Navy directly which wasn’t the right way. But anyway we sent a message to Delhi at midnight. It would be of comfort to learn that there is a round the clock control room in the Nation’s capital at all times for such situations. After we sent the message I rested for a couple of hours and when I woke up I learnt that a Navy Dornier had already made a sortie to check up on the fishermen.

There are some people who risk their lives everyday in their professions to make a living and fishermen are one such category. Everyday they venture out into the treacherous seas not really knowing if they will return alive. When I called up the officer in the district I learnt that the fishermen on one boat had spent the night in the sea on the bottom of their boat which had turned over. Imagine spending a full night in the dark in a rough sea not knowing when you will go under. The lucky thing was that later in the day they were all rescued by Navy helicopters and INS Dega. Another two boats had drifted to far away places and reached the shore safely. The next day it was all in the papers about the dramatic rescue.

However, we were on tenterhooks for three days wondering where the cyclone would hit. About five days before ‘Thane’ actually crossed the coast the reports said that it would cross the coast somewhere between Chennai and Nellore in AP. The satellite maps showed the path and the forecast was that ‘Thane’ would cross the coast somewhere between Nellore coast and Chennai. It is amazing how the India Meteorological Department is able to track the cyclone from its inception to its end with the help of the weather satellites. It went as predicted and ‘Thane’ missed AP and crossed the coast near Puducherry in Tamil Nadu. Around forty people were killed in TN and in AP there were three deaths- two of fishermen and another of an old woman who died when a tree got uprooted in the heavy winds and fell on her house. Many boats were damaged but there weren’t many casualties as we feared. One reason could be that there was ample time to warn the people along the coast and everyone in the Government right up to the CM monitored everything. The media too took a lead in making the public aware of the dangers of ‘Thane’ and its aftermath which helped things.

With ‘Thane’ 2011 came to an end and I hope 2012 would be uneventful.

Books Read in 2011

2011-12-30T14:33:00.001+05:30

Though I’ve read only fifty two books this year, which is roughly half the number of books that I bought, I am happy in a way. Some of the books I’ve read this year are truly outstanding. This is the list of the fifty two books that I read in 2011. Some of these books are those that I am reading for the second or the third time. Anyway, I’ve managed to read one book a week, on an average.

1. ‘Up in Honey’s Room’ by Elmore Leonard
2. ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ by Mohammed Hanif
3. ‘Utz’ by Bruce Chatwin
4. ‘If It Is Sweet’ by Mridula Koshy
5. ‘Global Soul’ by Pico Iyer
6. ‘Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7. ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ by Mohsin Hamid
8. ‘Moth Smoke’ by Mohsin Hamid
9. ‘One L’ by Scott Turow
10. ‘Diamond Dust’ by Anita Desai
11. ‘White Album’ by Joan Didion
12. ‘Istanbul’ by Orhan Pamuk
13. ‘Freaky Deaky’ by Elmore Leonard
14. ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ by Lynne Truss
15. ‘Complications’ by Atul Gawande
16. ‘Counsel of Strangers’ by Gouri Dange
17. ‘Out of Sight’ by Elmore Leonard
18. ‘Playing with Fire’ by Gordon Ramsay
19. ‘The Cobra’s Heart’ by Ryszard Kapuscinski
20. ‘After Dark’ by Haruki Murakami
21. ‘Worth Dying For’ by Lee Child
22. ‘Such a Long Journey’ by Rohinton Mistry
23. ‘Chance’ by Robert B Parker
24. ‘Hush Money’ by Robert B Parker
25. ‘How to Write a Damn Good Novel’ by James N Frey
26. ‘How to Do the Times Crosswords’ by Brian Greer
27. ‘Playmates’ by Robert B Parker
28. ‘Confessions of an Advertising Man’ by David Ogilvy
29. ‘Ceremony’ by Robert B Parker
30. ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’ by Haruki Murakami
31. ‘Back Story’ by Robert B Parker
32. ‘Butter Chicken in Ludhiana’ by Pankaj Misra
33. ‘Shining Through’ by Susan Isaacs
34. ‘Art of Dramatic Writing’ by Lajos Egri
35. ‘Love and Other Infectious Diseases’ by Molly Haskins
36. ‘The Joy of Running’ by Thaddeus Kostrubala
37. ‘The First Five Pages’ by Noah Lukeman
38. ‘Along Came a Spider’ by James Patterson
39. ‘The Courage to Begin’ by Robert Bingham
40. ‘Lunatic in My Head’ by Anjum Hasan
41. ‘Yesterday’s Spy’ by Len Deighton
42. ‘A Nice, Quiet Holiday’ by Aditya Sudarshan
43. ‘To Jerusalem and Back’ by Saul Bellow
44. ‘God Save the Dork’ by Sidin Vadukut
45. ‘Rough Weather’ by Robert B Parker
46. ‘Your Sacred Self’ by Wayne W Dyer
47. ‘An Expensive Place to Die’ by Len Deighton
48. ‘One Day I Will Write About This Place’ by Binyavanga Wainiaina
49. ‘Mole’ by Ashokamitran
50. ‘Balipeetam’ by Ranganayakamma
51. ‘Right To Write’ by Julia Camerson
52. ‘Write Away’ by Elizabeth George

In 2012 I hope to read more books than I plan to buy.

Top 11 of 2011

2011-12-28T11:29:00.003+05:30

Sometimes it is hard to believe that one can find the sort of books one can find on the pavements of Abids and in second hand book stores in Hyderabad. Over the years I’ve been fortunate to find some really good boks on my visits to Abids on Sundays and also in sales of second hand books. In this year, that is 2011, I’ve found more good books than in any other year in the past. By end of the last week of December I have picked up a total of 103 books.

Of those 103 books a lot of them are by Robert B Parker and many titles are travel related. Of the books I’ve picked up in 2011, these are the top 11:
(1) ‘Sands of Arabia’ by Wilfred Thesiger
(2) ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ by Joan Didion
(3) ‘The Sands of Arabia’ by Freya Stark
(4) ‘Everybody Loves a Good Drought’ by P. Sainath
(5) ‘The Emperor of all Maladies’ by Siddhartha Mukherjee
(6) ‘Playback’ by Raymond Chandler
(7) ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ by Mohammed Hanif
(8) ‘Get Carter’ Screenplay by Mark Hodges
(9) ‘The Continental Op’ by Dashiell Hammett
(10) ‘The Cobra’s Heart’ by Ryszard Kapuscinski
(11) ‘A Small Death in Lisbon’ by Robert Wilson

This is the list of all the 103 books I bought during the year.
1. ‘Beyond the Mexique Bay’ by Aldous Huxley-
2. ‘The Autograph Man’ by Zadie Smith
3. ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Dragon Tattoo’
4. ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ by Joan Didion (2nd copy)
5. ‘At Home With Books’
6. ‘Lucky Man’ by Michael J. Fox
7. ‘The Almost Moon’ by Alice Sebold
8. ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ by Mohammed Hanif
9. ‘If It Is Sweet’ by Mridula Koshy
10. ‘The Liveliest Art’ by Arthur Knight
11. ‘Shining Through’ by Susan Isaacs
12. ‘Newspaper Days’ by Theodore Drieser Rs
13. ‘Diamond Dust’ by Anita Desai
14. ‘The Finkler Question’ by Howard Jacobson
15. ‘Wonderland’ by Joyce Carol Oates
16.‘The Elephant Vanishes’ by Haruki Murakami
17 'This Boy’s Life’ by Tobias Wolff
18 'Life is Elsewhere’ by Milan Kundera
19 ‘Stephen Fry in America’ by Stephen Fry
20 ‘Get Carter’ Screenplay by Mark Hodges
21 ‘The Arrangement’ by Elia Kazan-
22 ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ by Che Guevara
23 ‘The Continental Op’ by Dashiell Hammett
24 ‘Encore Provence’ by Peter Mayle
25 ‘Dave Barry’s Guide to Guys’ by Dave Barry
26 ‘Better- A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance’- Atul Gawande
27 ‘After Dark’ by Haruki Murakami
28 The Man in My Basement’ by Walter Mosley
29 ‘All the Pretty Horses’ by Cormac McCarthy
30 ‘Complications’ by Atul Gawande
31 ‘A House for Mr Biswas’ by V.S. Naipaul
32 ‘The Leopard’ by Jo Nesbo
33 ‘Perdido Station Street’ by China Mieville
34 ‘Beyond the Blue Mountains’ by Penelope Lively
35 ‘Lunatic in My Head’ by Anjum Hasan
36 ‘Night Train to Lisbon’ by Pascal Mercier,
37 ‘Freaky Deaky’ by Elmore Leonard
38 ‘Freedom Song’ by Amit Chaudhri
39 ‘Arabia’ by Jonathan Raban
40 ‘Out of Sight’ by Elmore Leonard
41 ‘The Cobra’s Heart’ by Ryszard Kapuscinski
42 ‘Worth Dying For’ by Lee Child
43 ‘Chance’ by Robert B Parker
44 ‘The Great Plains’ by Ian Frazier
45 ‘Danziger’s Travels’ by Nick Danziger
46 ‘Never Let Me Go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro
47 ‘Such a Long Journey’ by Rohinton Mistry
48 ‘Meditations’ by Marcus Aurelius
49 ‘The Simoquin Prophecies’ by Samit Basu
50 ‘Hugger Mugger’ by Robert B Parker
51 ‘The Tao of Cricket’ by Ahish Nandy
52 ‘How to Do the Times Crossword’ by Brian Greer
53 ‘The Bounty Hunters’ by Elmore Leonard
54 ‘Yesterday’s Spy’ by Len Deighton
55 ‘Playmates’ by Robert B Parker-
56 ‘Backstory’ by Robert B Parker-
57 ‘Ceremony’ by Robert B Parker-
58 ‘Hunting Mister Heartbreak’ by Jonathan Raban
59 ‘Driving Over Lemons’ by Chris Stewart

60 ‘The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories’
61 ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ by Joan Didion,
62 ‘Sun After Dark’ by Pico Iyer,
63 ‘The Wayward Bus’ by John Steinbeck
64 ‘The Quiet American’ by Graham Greene
65 ‘The Glass Key’ by Dashiell Hammett
66 ‘Valediction’ by Robert B Parker
67 ‘Where the Wild Things Are’
68 ‘Going to the Movies’ by Syd Field
69 ‘The Lady and the Monk’ by Pico Iyer
70 ‘The Southern Gates of Arabia’ by Freya Stark
71 ‘The First Five Pages’ by Noah Lukeman
72 ‘The Emperor of All Maladies’ by Siddhartha Mukerjee
73 ‘Flaubert’s Parrot’ by Julian Barnes
74 ‘Stardust’ by Robert B Parker
75 ‘To Jerusalem and Back’ by Saul Bellow
76 ‘Along Came a Spider’ by James Patterson
77 ‘Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul’
78 ‘Structuring Your Novel’ by Meredith and Fitzgerald
79 ‘Love of Fat men’ by Helen Dunmore
80 ‘Mandingo’ by Kyle Onstott
81 ‘The First Forty Nine Stories’ by Ernest Hemingway

82 ‘An Expensive Place to Die’ by Len Deighton
83 ‘A Nice Quiet Holiday’ by Aditya Sudarsnah
84 ‘Sleepers’ by Lorenzo Carcaterra
85 ‘How to Write’ by Stanley Wood
86 ‘The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver’ by Syd Field
87 ‘Getting Things Done’ by David Allen
88 ‘God Save the Dork’ by Sidin Vadukut
89 ‘Balipeetam’ by Ranganayakamma
90 ‘Solstice’ by Joyce Carol Oates
91 ‘One Day I Will Write About This Place’ by Binyavanga Wainaina

92 ‘An Expensive Place to Die’ by Len Deighton
93 ‘Sands of Arabia’ by Wilfred Thesiger
94 ‘Of Human Bondage’ by Somerset Maugham
95 ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding
96 ‘The Discomfort Zone’ by Jonathan Franzen
97 ‘Playback’ by Raymond Chandler
98 ‘The Old Patagonian Express’ by Paul Theroux
99 ‘A Small Death in Lisbon’ by Robert Wilson
100 ‘Mole’ by Ashokamithran
101 ‘Widow’s Walk’ by Robert B Parker
102 ‘Everybody Loves a Good Drought’ by P Sainath
103 ‘Almost French’ by Sarah Turnbull

In the next post I'll put up a list of all the books I've managed to read during 2011.

The Sunday Haul

2011-12-23T12:32:00.004+05:30

It was a slightly upbeat Sunday for me this week. One reason could be the knowledge that I had picked up a few good books over the past week on my three visits to the Book Fair. Another reason could be that after two Sundays I am finally at home. One Sunday I had been at work at the Assembly and the other Sunday I was travelling. So I missed my regular Sunday routine for two successive Sundays and finally last Sunday I got a chance to visit Abids and also do other things I find to do time only on Sundays.

In the past I’ve sometimes picked up books on a mere hunch. There’s something about the cover or the title of the book that marks it out as something different. Last Sunday at Chikkadpally where I usually stop before going to Abids, I saw ‘A Small Death in Lisbon’ that I knew instantly was something different. And when I read the blurb I knew my hunch wasn’t wrong. ‘An intense reading experience. You will turn the last page of this compelling novel almost out of breath’ was what The New York Times’ blurb said on the cover of the book. I did not need anything more to convince me to pick up the book which I did for forty rupees. Later when I googled for Robert Wilson I knew I had landed a good book which adds to my growing collection of crime fiction.

A couple of weeks ago I had seen Ashokamitran’s ‘Mansarovar’ that I did not buy right away for two reasons. One reason was the fact that the seller was one who wasn’t the sort to give it away for a bargain and the other reason was my over confidence that no one would pick it up. Sadly, it was gone when I checked later and I felt very bad about letting it go. However on Sunday I found another book of his - ‘Mole’ - which is all about the seven months that Ashokamitran spent at the Iowa University in connection with some international visiting writer event. I’ve been dreaming of doing some sort of a writing workshop at Iowa University Writing School ever since I realised that my writing talent was almost non-existent and also that whatever little of it I have is taking me nowhere. Sadly, it remains out of my reach and perhaps will remain as another unfulfilled dream of mine.

I felt glad I had not picked up the copy of P Sainath’s ‘Everybody Loves a Good Drought’ that I saw at the book fair last week. I would have had to shell out two hundred rupees for it otherwise. On Sunday at Abids I found a copy of the same book that I got for only a hundred and twenty rupees. I feel sort of guilty about buying a second hand copy of the book since I had made a decision long back to buy only new copies of a few good books. Anyway, after I read the book which I now feel I shoud have read long time ago, I might buy a few new copies to gift to people who do not have any idea of what really farmers go through in our country.

Another book that I picked up was Robert B Parker’s ‘Widow’s Walk’ which Uma had spotted. I did not have an idea then that I already possess a copy of the book that one of my brothers had given me. With the Sunday’s haul of four books the total number of books I picked up during the month so far comes to eleven. It might go up by another couple of books because the Book Fair is not yet over and I have plans to drip in one last time.

At the Book Fair and the Haul

2011-12-20T12:53:00.002+05:30

It is never a good idea to drop in at any event on the first day itself, anywhere especially in Hyderabad, especially if it is the sort of an event that goes on for more than a week, This I say from long experience. Most of the time things are rarely ready or even half ready on the first day when the event is supposed to be inaugurated. Though I know half the stalls will not be set up I always make it a point to drop in at the Book Fair on the very first day every year. Like I expected about a third of the stalls in the 26th Hyderabad Book Fair at the Necklace Road were empty. In some stalls the guys were feverishly arranging the books on the shelves and tables.

In one such stall of a second hand book seller, with the shelves only half arranged and with cartons lying around unopened, I managed to spot a book that was on my list of travel books to buy. Wilfred Thesiger’s ‘Arabian Sands’ is the No.1 on the list of Top 30 Travel books on World Hum, a travel website. It was a book that I did not ever expect to find but my luck is such I always find a good book when I least expect it. On the first day of the Book Fair I got lucky and found this book that I had been looking for since more than five years. That was only the haul on the first day. I had seen good copies of Marcus Aurelius’ ‘Meditations’ with a fantastic cover, P. Sainath’s ‘Everybody Loves a Good Drought’ that I wanted to buy right away but did not. There was also an old copy of Somerset Maugham’s ‘Of Human Bondage’ that I planned to pick up along with the other two books before the Book Fair ended.

So next day itself I landed up there, money in wallet and anxiety in the heart whether the books I had seen the previous day were in the shelves or gone. As expected I could not locate Marcus Aurelius’ ‘Meditations’ however hard I looked. I did not pick up P. Sainath’s ‘Everybody Loves a Good Drought’ because I found other books that I wouldn’t otherwise find. However I picked up ‘Of Human Bondage’ for a hundred rupees and also William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ at the same seller. At another stall I found Raymond Chandler’s ‘Playback’ and got it for hundred rupees again. ‘Playback’ is my third Chandler find this year and I am feeling very happy the collection is growing. At one stall of ‘Best Books’ (their other stall is ‘Great Books’) I found Jonathan Franzen’s ‘The Discomfort Zone’ that I got for Rs 95.

I went again the next day, on Saturday in the evening, on my third visit to the Book Fair in as many days. I went with my family which meant I couldn’t head straight to the book stalls. First we filled up ourselves with some snacks, had coffee and looked at the people staggering out of the book fair holding bags filled with books and with expressions like they had found an unexpected treasure. Later I too found something no less a treasure. I spotted Paul Theroux’s ‘The Old Patagonian Express’ that I had read long back but did not possess a copy. I got it for Rs 150 though a copy of his ‘Isles of Oceania’ was for Rs 100 in another shelf. I did not yet feel like buying P.Sainath’s ‘Everybody Loves a Good Drought’ and thought I’d wait until the last day when the outstation sellers give away the books at any price.

There were altogether more than half a dozen stalls at the Book Fair selling second hand books. There were the Hyderabad based second hand book sellers like like Best Books, Great Books, Unique, and MR Books. Then there were the outstation ones like Prateek Book Stores, Neha Books, Pooja Books, Student Book Centre and others from places like Thane and Delhi with some really good books. I cannot believe the number of titles by James Patterson that are crowding the shelves in almost all the second hand bookstalls. However, I did not come across any new titles of Robert B Parker’s Spenser books different from the ones that I already have. I guess I will find more books but I am not sure if I will pick them up because I have far exceeded my budget for books this year. I’ve picked up six books at the Book Fair in the first two days and there’s still less than a week to go.

Wait until I post about the haul of books I had on Sunday at Abids. I picked up four books on Sunday as if the six books I had picked up at the Book Fair weren’t enough. Sometime in the coming days I will post a list of all the books I’ve picked up this year and also a list of the book I have managed to read during the year.

A Journey within a Trip

2011-12-16T11:58:00.000+05:30

When one finishes reading a good book it takes a while to leave behind the world the writer has created and return to one’s world. Last Sunday I was in a bus trundling out of the city with a book in hand to my native town. Less than three months ago I had made the same trip as part of a large contingent of our families. Me and my brothers had wanted to show our families the ancestral house we were born in and our numerous relations especially our elderly uncle, my father’s eldest brother. It was a happy reunion. Our kids saw for the first time some of their cousins, their aunts and grandparents in their eighties for the first time. I wondered when I would be returning again to my town. Not more than three months have passed and I am making the trip again.

This time I was making the trip all alone to attend a ceremony of the same uncle who had died the previous week. After breakfast on Sunday morning, I caught a bus sometime around half past nine and settled down for the four hour trip. The weather outside was gorgeous and I spent a long time looking out of the window at the passing landscape that seemed to change with every mile. Now we were speeding by on the National Highway and now we were passing through small crowded roadside towns bustling with people. There was evidence of the effects of the drought here and there in the form of dried up crops which had turned brown. The only greenery was the green patches of groundnut crop irrigated by borewell water .

Some places the grass had turned golden that looked just wonderful in the midmorning sun. At periodical intervals the bus made a few halts at small towns where some of the passengers got out and newer ones got in. One thing I miss in the Secretariat posting is the frequent travelling that I used to do in my earlier posting at Suryapet which entailed travel by local buses and watching a variety of people. In between watching the landscape outside the bus window I lost myself in Binyavanga Wainaina’s ‘One Day I Will Write About This Place’ that was engrossing. Outside there was rural India and inside, in my hands was rural Africa.

‘One Day I Will Write About This Place’ is a memoir by Wainaiana about his life in Kenya, South Africa, his childhood, his relations especially his parents, sister and studying which he doesn’t seem to be very interested in and a lot about Africa especially its politics, its numerous tribes and flashes of humor that makes for a fascinating read. Wainaian describes the African landscape, the places he visits and the people he meets and about his desire to write more than anything else. I was lost in that book that took me to Africa while I was travelling in my own homeland. I felt like it was a journey within a trip. Then there were a few things I had in common with Wainaina- a love of reading, a desire to write and also, the fact that he was involved in agriculture extension, that is, giving advice to farmers which is what I am supposed to do in my job. Though the copy I am reading is an uncorrected bound proof there was no sign (at least to my eyes) that there was anything wrong except for a couple of typos. It would be interesting to read the actual published edition that I hope I will find in the bookstores here.

Lost in the book the four hours passed quite quickly and at around two in the afternoon I reached the small town. I walked through the narrow road of the town to the large house where I was born. I felt sad and couldn’t properly express my feelings to my aunt who lost her son and her husband within the span of a couple of weeks. I was also amazed at the fortitude my unlettered, hardworking almost eighty year old aunt displayed. On my previous visit two months ago under happy circumstances in the company of my brothers and their families I had told my aunt that she would live to be a hundred years. She had shaken her head and said she did not have such a wish. She had seen enough of life she said. Now she wiped the tears from her eyes and asked why I did not bring along my kid. Grandmothers are always like that, they want to see the kids. I had thought of bringing along my son but he was preparing for his midterm exams. But still I wish I had taken him along because my aunt and my mother who was with her would have felt happy.

After lunch I was on my way home at Hyderabad. But this time I made the return trip cocooned in a cousin’s car. It was an unremarkable trip that lasted just three hours. We did not stop anywhere and we didn’t talk much also. I did not read the book but watched the landscape zip by with barely anything registering. The world’s so different when seen through the window of a bus.

Idle Post

2011-12-13T12:20:00.000+05:30

The previous Sunday I was at work ( on duty at the Assembly) and hence couldn’t go to Abids to indulge in the one thing that I enjoy more than anything else-that is hunting for second hand books. It has become such a habit to bring along at least one book home every week from Abids that I become restless and sort of disoriented if that does not happen. To compensate for the missed Abids visit I decided to drop in at a second hand bookstore and try to look for a book that I can take home. Though nothing can beat the experience of finding a good book on the pavements at Abids, on certain occasions one has to make a compromise and hence the visit to Best Books at Lakdikapul last Thursday.

One can never get books anywhere at the same price as one can get them at Abids on Sundays. Prices of books in second hand bookstores are quite high and in Best Books they are higher than anywhere else which is one reason I try to limit my purchases to only the absolutely irresistible titles there. I saw VS Naipaul’s ‘Among the Believers’ and another title about his travels in America but the price was so high I did not feel like buying those books. After having read Pico Iyer’s praise for Michael Oondatje’s ‘The Cat’s Table’ and its review by Jai Arjun Singh’s in ‘The Literary Review’ of this month I wanted to begin with ‘The English Patient.’ I had earlier seen it at Abids but had, foolishly, not picked it up. At Best Books however I saw Oondatje’s ‘Anil’s Ghost’ which again I did not pick up for the simple reason that I first want to read ‘The English Patient’ followed by other works. So I returned empty handed from Best Books which made me even more crotchety.

So on Friday last I went to Frankfurt at Begumpet and browsed for a long time and in the end saw two Robert B Parker titles- ‘Pastime’ and ‘Cold Service.’ These too I did not buy because the price was simply too much for my budget. The guy wanted eighty rupees for each book and made it clear (perhaps from the look on my face) that he wouldn’t reduce the price by even a single rupee. If it were the regular guy I would have tried to bargain and also got the books for a much lesser price. So I upped and left without the books because I was slightly offended at the guy’s uppity behaviour as if one cannot find those books anywhere else but in his shop. While taking my bike out I almost swallowed my pride and went back to pick up the books because, what the heck, they are Spenser titles after all, but surprisingly, I didn’t. Maybe I will go one of these days and pick them up but right now I feel I’ll get the books at Abids soon.

The only bright book related moment of the past week was reading about Chris Stewart’s ‘Driving Over Lemons’ in Aparna Karthikeyan’s column ‘Armchair Traveller’ in the Metro Plus sometime last week. Sometime in October or earlier I had picked up the book at Abids and now reading Karthikeyan’s review is making me think of beginning to read it one of these days.

A major disappointment was deciding not to go for the book signing of Wilbur Smith’s ‘Those in Peril’ on Saturday at Landmark. Somehow I just did not feel like going at the last moment though I was all dressed up and ready to go. It looks like I have missed something really interesting if the reports of the event in the papers and Hari’s post on his blog are anything to go by.

Anyway, the Hyderabad Book Fair is just two days away which I hope will drive away my winter blues.

On Duty at the Assembly

2011-12-09T10:36:00.000+05:30

Many in AP can be forgiven for being under the impression that is a cushy 10 to 5 job for the people who work in the Secretariat. I too had a similar impression until I too became a Secretariat staffer last year. The Department where I joined is one where there are no fixed timings, no fixed work or anything like that. One has to stay long hours, do everything assigned and sometimes more than that, and attend scores of meetings which leaves little time for other things in life. However, it isn’t the same every day but this is more or less the pattern in general. But there’s always something going on. Right now there is a drought in the state, a severe one that not many who live in urban areas might be aware of. This was what dominated the Legislature sessions for five days last week. Unlike last time I was assigned duties at the Legislative Assembly during the current sessions. Being a legislator might have its own share of fun but being a government employee isn’t especially when the legislatures are in session.

I missed the first day because my pass wasn’t ready. The second day onwards and for the next three days I had to reach the Assembly by nine in the morning. One of the high points about attending the sessions at the Legislative Assembly in Hyderabad apart from hanging around the beautiful, historic buildings is the food in the canteen inside. Most of the days I had breakfast there in the company of a variety of people. More than the MLA’s there are the gunmen who accompany them. They are all over the place dressed in safari suits, some carrying their sten guns, walkie talkie sets and some with their pistols hidden under their lapels. The cops in the dark blue safaris were the constables while the ones in cream colored safari suits were the inspectors. Then there were the marshals in the same dress but with a red band tied to their upper arms.

Apart from cops, officials, legislators and their hangers on there are the press people present in the assembly premises. There were a couple of familiar faces from the national and regional press but I could not recognise the rest of the crowd. There were other officials clutching files and appearing nervous. It is a nervous time that we have because we never know what gets asked for. We have to be ready with all details on our fingertips if not in the papers we carry. Since there was a discussion on drought I brought along a lot of stuff in case anyone wanted to know more about the drought here. It was one reason why I could bring along only one book.

The Assembly is more crowded than the Council where I was on duty the last time. One gets to see all the Ministers, some famous MLAs and top officials one normally does not get to see on other days which isn’t exactly a fun thing because most of them go around with grim faces like the entire burden of humanity is on their shoulders.

Since the Assembly met on Sunday too needless to say I missed my weekly visit to Abids to look for books. However since I had taken along a book now and then I sat in the canteen by myself and read Robert B Parker’s ‘Rough
Weather’ whenever I got the time. I managed to finish in two days. It takes a huge toll to wait nervously for nearly the entire day in the Assembly. On the last day, the day of the no-confidence motion the sessions went on until 1-30 am but I did not hang around till then. I left at half past nine.

It was hard missing the trip to Abids on Sunday but then I am planning to compensate for it by dropping in at a second hand bookstore and picking up a book. It wasn’t that I did not get a book since I got Dan Brown’s ‘Digital Fortress’ from Daniel the other day. The other compensation was reading “Literary Review’ in The Hindu in the evening on Sunday since in the morning the paper was delivered late and I had to rush. More about it in another post.

Update on Hyderabad Book Fair:

I was quite relieved to learn that the Hyderabad Book Fair is back at People’s Plaza on Necklace Road instead of the Nizam College Grounds which was the venue before it was postponed. It means that I can visit the Book Fair on my way home more often than I had planned. The Book Fair is another week away but I’ve already begun the countdown.

3 Things

2011-12-06T21:20:00.000+05:30

‘Pakwaan’ Opens

With things being pretty grim on the personal front of late, I’m desperate for news that would bring some cheer. Last week there were a few such things. First was the fact that the Irani joint ‘Panchsheel’ that I had mentioned in a previous post had closed has now reopened in a new avatar. A swank new joint called ‘Pakwaan’ has come up in place of ‘Panchsheel’ on the busy road linking Ravindra Bharati and the Secretariat. The other day I happened to be passing by and had a fleeting glimpse of ‘Pakwaan’.

The place now seems to be a dedicated Biryani joint which is rather good news and the other thing is that the Irani Chai section hasn’t been entirely done away with. Adjacent to the main eatery is a small chai/café with about half a dozen tables catering to the crowd who cannot do without Irani chai and associated snacks. It was a good idea to minimize the café part because most of the time the tables would be empty. Anyway, in case anyone finds himself in and around Lakdikapul and Ravindrabharathi and is dying to taste some fine biryani please note there’s Pakwaan.

The Book Fair

The other thing that brought me so more cheer was an ad on the back of a city bus. The ad said that the 26th Hyderabad Book Fair would now begin on the 15th of December for ten days. It was to begin from the 1st of December but was postponed for various reasons. Now that 15th of December is less than ten days away I have enough time to rustle up some cash. Since I had missed going to Abids this Sunday and might also have to skip going there next Sunday too, the thought of the ten day Book Fair is very inviting.

A Book Signing

The other day I read somewhere that Wilbur Smith would be in town on the 9th of December at ‘Landmark’ in Somajiguda to sign his new book ‘Those in Peril’. I have read Wilbur Smith a long time back and do not even recollect his titles. But I plan to be there at the event if possible.

The Sunday Haul

2011-12-02T12:24:00.001+05:30

It is not unusual those visiting Abids for the first time to be find many a surprise at the Sunday book market. I’ve been looking for books on the pavements of Abids since more than twenty years and the surprises never cease.. Sometimes I find the latest issue of New Yorker or Atlantic magazine, or a signed copy of a famous book or a brand new book at dirt cheap prices. The anticipation of what surprises Abids holds is something that makes me go to Abids every Sunday.

Last week I had another pleasant and unusual surprise. Apart from the regular copies of books, bestsellers or otherwise, sometimes I come across copies of uncorrected proofs of titles by well known writers. Such books do not hold interest for me and I usually desist from buying them. But last week I made an exception. It isn’t even two months since I read about Binyavanga Wainaiana’s article ‘How to Write About Africa’ somewhere on the net and also about his forthcoming book ‘One Day I Will Write About This Place.’ Though I thought it would be wonderful to read the book I never wondered if I’d be able to find it or had such thoughts. However, last Sunday I found a copy of ‘One Day I Will Write About This Place’ but it was a uncorrected proof copy and not meant for sale in bookstores. It was being published by ‘Granta Books’ and the publishing date was November 2011. I got the book for hundred rupees and am wondering now if I should have bought it. However, I will get to know why the book is so eagerly talked about and maybe wait for the corrected final published copy.

The other find of Sunday was Joyce Carol Oates’s ‘Solstice’ that I picked up in a heap of books selling for twenty rupees only. Ashokamitran’s ‘Mansarovar’ that I had seen two weeks ago wasn’t to be seen. Uma, who was with me, found a new copy of the script of Arundhati Roy’s ‘In Which Annie Gives Those Ones’ which I consider a good find. Later I urged him to pick up Paul Theroux’s ‘Dark Star Safari’ that was the first Paul Theroux book I had read a long time back.

Hyderabad Book Fair Postponement

I was disappointed to learn from a comment on my previous post that the Hyderabad Book Fair is postponed. Surprisingly there was nothing in the news about it but I am very disappointed especially after going through an agonising countdown for it to begin. Anyway, there’s now the first Sunday of December to look forward to for ‘The Literary Review Supplement’ in The Hindu. I doubt if I will be able to read it in peace on Sunday morning itself because of work. The Legislature is in session and is meeting on Sunday also which is unusual. Since I have been assigned duties at the Assembly I might miss the pleasure of reading Literary Review on Sunday morning and also miss the visit to Abids.

Countdown to the Book Fair

2011-11-30T12:04:00.000+05:30

Ever since I read a little more than a week ago that the 26th Hyderabad Book Fair begins this year from the 1st of December I’ve been feeling unusually restless. I’ve never looked forward to anything so impatiently in this year. I’ve never even looked at the calendar so often for anything other than Sunday, especially for the first Sunday of the month (for the Literary Review in The Hindu) but I now await the first day of December. Though it is only a day away from today I am counting the hours which seem to be passing agonizingly slow. But I do not understand why I am so eager to buy more books when I already have scores of books lying unread since ages.

Last year the book fair was at the Necklace Road on the People’s Plaze just a short distance from my office. After office I went there in the evenings on a couple of occasions and bought Carson McCuller’s ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’. However I do not remember going there too many times. This year the book fair is in the Nizam College grounds which is a bit out of the way for me but not very far. I only hope there are more second hand book stalls this year especially those from out of town. I plan to buy only a few books especially copies of Sri Sri’s ‘Mahaprasthanam’ and Gurujada Appa Rao’s ‘Kanyashulkam’ that I hope to buy in the Telugu Academy stall.

Another related event I came to know about is the Hyderabad Literary Festival that is scheduled to be held from January 16 to 18, 2012. I am not sure of the exact dates but this is roughly what I came to know. Last year I missed the maiden event because there was something urgent at work that I had to attend to during the same period. This year too it appears I may have to miss it since I am planning a vacation around that time. Strange it may sound but so far I haven’t attended a single lit fest though there are quite a few good ones. Someday I plan to be either at the Jaipur Litfest or at the Kollam festival if I get the chance.

But now I wait for December 1, which is tomorrow.

The Haul

2011-11-25T11:30:00.002+05:30

It took a full year to pass before I learnt that there was a library in the premises of the Secretariat. Sometime last week I located the library and checked it out. It was quite a sizeable one with a room for periodicals and another couple of rooms filled with books. The periodical section was open only for an hour during the lunch hour every day. I thought of checking out the books some other day but forgot all about it. But a week ago when I saw a notice about a two day book exhibition on occasion of the Library Week, stuck on the notice board I decided to drop in on the second day. There was a small crowd checking out the books displayed. There weren’t any titles interesting enough for me to pick up but I nevertheless bought a book. It was a Telugu novel.

It might come as a surprise to all but the very first book I read when I was a school kid was a Telugu book. It was also the first time I ever visited a library back in Nizamabad where I spent a considerable part of my childhood. However, afterwards I switched over to English books but I haven’t stopped reading Telugu newspapers and other material. Though born a Maharashtrian, I studied Hindi and Telugu at school. I am surrounded by Telugu speaking people all the time and also sometimes at work I have to read and write Telugu which I do fairly well. It is another thing that I cannot either read or write in my mother tongue, which is Marathi. However, I have never read a full length Telugu novel so far and since a long time I have harboured a desire to read Telugu classics. I have planned to read Gurujada Appa Rao’s ‘Kanyashulkam’, Sri Sri’s works like ‘Mahaprasthanam’, and other classics in the original language. At the book exhibition in the Secretariat I picked up a Telugu novel that I had read about- ‘Balipeetam’ by Ranganayakamma.

The copy of ‘Balipeetam’ by Ranganayakamma that I bought was a beautifully bound copy with a colourful cover. I got the book for only sixty rupees. I plan to start reading it right away and have the satisfaction of having read at least one Telugu novel in 2011. The book is fairly lengthy and though I cannot read Telugu as fast as English I hope to complete it by the end of the year.

On Sunday I was at a funeral and hence couldn’t go to Abids for my weekly book hunt. Since the past two weeks several distressing occurrences have put me under a cloud. I needed some kind of relief and when I read the newspapers on Tuesday I found it. I read in Tuesday’s ‘Metro Plus’ supplement that Sidin Vadukut’s ‘God Save the Dork’, the second book in the Dork trilogy, was out I decided to buy it. I had found his first book very hilarious and had been waiting for this second book. The same day I went to Landmark at Somajiguda with Hari and picked it up. I plan to begin reading it after I finish ‘A Nice Quiet Holiday’ that I am reading now.

So...You Want to Eat Here?

2011-11-22T14:34:00.000+05:30

The New Ones

The dining out scene in Jubilee Hills/Banjara Hills seems to have evolved to such an extent that they now have eateries with names comprising of just a letter (eg: N) or two, like nothing more is needed. A couple of years ago ‘N’ opened somewhere in Jubilee Hills, and last week I came to know, through ‘Outlook’ magazine, that there’s a restaurant called ‘So’ located on Road 92, Jubilee Hills. The redoubtable Anvar Ali Khan had written a review of this place in the recent issue of ‘Outlook’ which I chanced upon accidentally. I am not aware if ‘So’ is new or has been around for sometime but to me, it is a new discovery. . Anyway I hope the food there isn’t so so because these JH/BH types can be pretty choosy when it comes to eating out. But if it has been written about in Outlook then I guess it could be a place worth going to if you happen to be a JH/BH type.

Even as I was drafting these lines came the news that yet another restaurant has opened in Jubilee Hills/Banjara Hills area. Last Friday I read in ‘The Hindu’ that a restaurant called ‘Kona’s Fine Dine Restaurant’ set amidst the scenic Durgam Cheruvu lake was inaugurated just the other day. There’s a lot of detail about the restaurant and the fare that it would offer but what struck me was that it could accommodate 450 seats in various settings and that it wouldn’t cost you more than 800 bucks for a decent meal. From what I know of restaurants near lakes, mosquitoes are an inevitable part of the scenery so I hope the KFDR people have taken this into consideration and avoid ‘Waiter, there’s a mosquito in my soup’ type of situations.

The Old and the Gone Ones

For every eatery that opens in the Jubilee Hills/Banjara Hills area two eateries in this part of the city seem to be closing down. About a week ago I happened to notice that a landmark Irani hotel ‘The President’ had closed down shutters. In its place has come up some store selling Chinese products which was even more tragic than the demise of ‘President’. ‘President’ was a busy place but wasn’t decently maintained though its location was just great, being right at RTC Crossroads. I haven’t been there quite often owing to the shabby conditions but I do regrets its closing down.

Another Irani joint that hasn’t exactly shut down is ‘Panchsheel’ near Ravindra Bharati. Last year while the Assembly was in session I spent quite sometime sitting in Panchsheel having chai and reading books. I used to come here now and then before but since a year I have been going there quite regularly owing to the special duties. Last week I noticed that the board has been taken down and there’s some work going on suggesting that the place is undergoing a metamorphosis into a better, fancier and needless to say, expensive Irani joint serving more biryani than chai. In its earlier avatar Panchsheel was a laid back place with thin crowds consisting of auto drivers, cops and others having chai and chattering endlessly. I always used to find a table for myself every time I went there to have the smallest and delicious chota samosas along with chai. I do hope they still serve the same stuff when it reopens. Incidentally, the Assembly sessions begin from December 1 and I hope the place opens its doors by then.

THE SUNDAY HAUL

2011-11-18T12:39:00.001+05:30

The Four Book Haul
Bargaining was one thing that was proving something very difficult for me to master. I thought I’d never be able to get the hang of it despite my many feeble attempts. I always ended up paying more than necessary. But at Abids I seemed to be succeeding now and then, managing to get some books at the price I wanted. I always leave feeling I could have got a better price. Last week, however, I managed to get two books at what I think was a great bargain. I picked up two books from a seller who usually doesn’t budge from his price and reluctantly lowers the price by just ten or twenty rupees. On Sunday I got two good books at half the price.

One gets something nearing a cardiac arrest on finding two good books at the same moment. Something of that almost happened to me when I saw not one but three of Syd Field’s books apart from Robert McKee’s ‘Story’ at Abids. After checking out the books I realized some aspiring screenwriter had lost interest and sold away the books. But I had another theory in mind. No one who buys writing books sells them away all at once. I wondered if someone had stolen them and disposed them. Whatever, since I did not have Syd Field’s ‘The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver’ I decided to buy it as well as another book I thought of giving to a friend. It was David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’ that I had earlier read and also gave as a gift to one of my brothers on his birthday.

The seller wouldn’t budge from his price of 350 rupees for these two books. I told him that I’d buy the books if he gave the two books I wanted for that price. He took a while to think and just when I thought he would put back the books on the shelf, he agreed. I was astonished and it was then I realized I may not have packed that much money. But luckily I had and so picked up both Syd Field’s ‘The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver’ and David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’ for 350 rupees

These weren’t the only books I found on Sunday at Abids. There was a book on writing that I am now unable to find mentioned anywhere on the internet. The book is Stanley Wood’s ‘How to Write’ that I got for only thirty rupees. It was a hardcover book and had someone’s name inscribed in black ink along with the year- 1951.

But the first book I had picked up on Sunday was one I had seen earlier. It was Lorenzo Carcaterra’s ‘Sleepers’ that is a hard hitting memoir. I did not pick up the book the first time I saw it two Sundays ago. When I saw it on Sunday I picked it up especially after I noticed that it had been made into a movie. It seems something worth reading and so I bought it paying thirty rupees for it. In all I picked up four books on Sunday including one that I have to give away.

Hyderabad Book Fair
On the subject of books there’s happy news for those who love books. I read in the papes that the 26th edition of the Hyderabad Book Fair is beginning from December 1 to December 11 at the Nizam College grounds. It is an event that I look forward to with more trepidation than eagerness because there would be so many books to buy during that ten day period that there’s the danger of losing one’s mind and buying whatever book one happens to like. Luckily, being in the Government has helped me in limiting my purchases because we don’t get paid like the Ambanis. Last year I bought just a couple of books at the Book Fair and this year I don’t know what I will find. But there’s one book I am looking for now especially after I read about it yesterday.

Another Book to Find
In Wednesday’s (17-11-11) The Metro Plus supplement in The Hindu I came across a well written travel piece by Aparna Karthikeyan about a ballooning trip. In the same page she also wrote a wonderful review (in the column The Armchair Traveller) of an equally wonderful book called ‘Cloud Road- A Journey through the Inca Heartland’ by John Harrison. Surprisingly, I have not heard of this book before but however I am on the look out for it and hope to find it soon because there are a lot of travel books I have to read. In 2012 I plan to read all the travel books that I have collected so far.

A Vegetarian's Non-Vegetarian Dinner

2011-11-16T11:25:00.001+05:30

The saddest man at the dinner table at a Muslim wedding is perhaps the one who calls himself a ‘total vegetarian.’ He’ll find there’s nothing on the table before him that can be called as ‘vegetarian’ even remotely. Fortunately I do not call myself a ‘total’ vegetarian nor I intended to be any more sad than I am. In situations like this where I do not have any choice I eat non-veg stuff without qualms. Last week I was in such a situation. I broke a personal rule and tasted several tasty delicacies at a dinner at a wedding. We had worked together in another Department earlier and later at Nalgonda. So even though the venue was somewhere far away I went to the trouble of going several kilometres out of the way just to attend the marriage of the daughter of a colleague in the Department..

An important thing to remember about Muslim weddings, especially in Hyderabad, is that they begin quite late in the evening. I failed to keep it in mind and hence landed at the venue rather too early, so early that apart from me there was only another person who just reached. Luckily, he was another colleague who worked with me at Suryapet. So I sat talking with him for quite a long time. I did not notice that two hours had passed and the marriage party had yet to come. My colleague was so excited at thought I was posted at the Secretariat that when others asked where I was now, my friend told them rather proudly that I was at the Secretariat like it was the Pentagon.

Ultimately, it was eleven in the night when I sat down for dinner with my colleague. On the table were spread an astonishing variety of dishes. There were large bowls filled with chicken curry, fish fry, mutton biryani, another mutton dish, two varieties of roti, raita, two varieties of dessert and other stuff I did not even recognise. There wasn’t a single thing a vegetarian could eat without feeling guilty. Those at the table were already attacking the food with gusto and giving me odd looks. I was damn hungry and decided to go the whole hog. Until I finished the dinner I forgot I was a vegetarian. The kheer was the best dish and I had it in the end. Afterwards we had a cup of Irani chai that taste of which still lingers. It was the perfect chai but there was still something I felt was lacking - a paan.

It was almost midnight when we hit the road. I looked for some place where I could get a paan to round off the fine meal. Everything was shut down and I almost lost hope and was reconciled to going to sleep without tasting a paan. But I was lucky. Near home a paan shop was open, its shutter open just a few inches. The guy bent down and peered out to ask what I wanted. When I told him I wanted a paan he quickly made one and gave it to me. Only after I put the paan in my mouth not only did I feel like I would be able to digest all the stuff I had eaten I also felt glad that I had something leafy for dinner even if it was just a paan.

THE SUNDAY HAUL

2011-11-11T11:29:00.001+05:30

The Abids second hand book bazaar that comes up on Sundays is a pretty open affair in the sense that everything is in the open- the books, the sellers, and also the buyers. It is, literally, a bazaar on the pavement. The sellers display and sell their books on the pavements before shops that are closed for Sunday. Being in the open it means exposure to the sun, which can get pretty merciless in the summer. In the monsoon the unpredictable rains play spoilsport to the book hunting experience. The books get drenched in the rain which, in my opinion, worse than getting drenched oneself. That leaves only one season when it is pure bliss to haunt the Abids book bazaar- Winter.

I hadn’t realized it was already winter in Hyderabad until last Sunday when a mild winter sun came out. It felt pleasantly warm as I discussed the Literary Review in The Hindu over a cup of Iran chai with Uma Shanker. There was news about the Lit for Life event at Chennai and the Fiction Prize going to Rahul Bhattacharya for ‘The Sly Company of People Who Care’ that I now want to read very soon. After the tea we went out for the hunt among the piles of books.

There was a seller who had new stock of almost brand new copies of Penguin titles of Indian authors. There were a lot of books that I wanted to pick up but the seller was someone who doesn’t reduce the prices to the levels I want. But Uma Shanker and Srinath picked up each a title of Marquez. I saw Ashokamitran’s ‘Mansarovar’ that I might look at again and buy next week if it still around. Next we went to another seller and looked in another pile that we’ve been rifling through since weeks and came up with two books.

The first find was a tattered copy of ‘An Expensive Place to Die’ by Len Deighton who happens to be one of my favourite writers. The second find was ‘A Nice Quiet Holiday’ by Aditya Sudarshan who writes interesting articles in The Literary Review supplement of The Hindu. I have already begun to read the book right after coming out of a daze induced by reading Anjum Hasan’s ‘Lunatic in My Head.’ The style of writing made me want to read her next novel ‘Neti, Neti’ that I hope I can find soon.

Hyderabad Happenings

2011-11-08T14:17:00.001+05:30

Yet Another Eatery

With so much happening, especially on the food side, I sometimes wish I could relocate to Jubilee Hills/Banjara Hills. If I’d been as interested in eating as I am in reading then maybe I would have done that long ago. Anyway, it isn’t my fault really but another eatery opened last week in Jubilee Hills/Banjara Hills. But I am not going to say much about it or crib too much about it. It isn’t that I am on the look out for such happenings in JH/BH but I have this habit of reading at least two other newspapers everyday other than The Hindu. A couple of days ago I saw an ad in the TOI ad for ‘The Buffet’ that is described in the ad as ‘the newest destination in town’ which incidentally is located in the GVK One Mall (Level 5) in Banjara Hills.

However ‘The Buffet’ doesn’t appear like the sort of fancy the eatery which will have the JH/BH crowd jumping into their fancy cars and rushing to it at the tiniest sign of hunger. The buffet at ‘The Buffet’ costs only Rs 249 which, like I said before, isn’t exactly something that will have the JH/BH crowd salivating. I mean you don’t drive five miles in a Rs 35 lakh Mercedes Benz ( or equivalent set of wheels) to eat a meal that costs less than two hundred and fifty rupees. It simply isn’t in their class though they wouldn’t mind it on those occasions when they are shopping their wallets off in the pricey stores at GVK One.

C6 Metamorphoses

The first city magazine of Hyderabad was Channel Six which until recently came out in a format slightly bigger than a post card. It was the definitive guide for site-seeing, shopping, events in Hyderabad that catered to a lot of visitors to Hyderabad. Many years ago when I was in that phase spouting poetry I won a prize for something I had written. The prize was a meal for two at a place called ‘Once Upon a Time’ but I was too nervous to go. So the prize went unavailed but I still have that issue somewhere that I show to everyone who tells me I cannot write anything, not even poetry.

Last week I happened to be in Landmark where I picked up a copy of something called C6 which I realized was Channel Six in a new avatar. At last count there were more than a dozen city magazines in Hyderabad like WOW Hyderabad, 040 and others which had good production values with glossy paper, colour photographs which C6 wasn’t able to match until now. I feel glad that it has come of age and ready to challenge the others. Amita Talwar is the soul behind C6 and coincidentally there was a big write up about her in The Hindu the other week.

In the November issue of Channel 6 I read an interview of Jyotirmaya Sharma, a regular fixture at literary events. I last saw him at the launch of ‘River of Smoke’ by Amitav Ghosh at The Park. Since he is a writer also I was not surprised to read that he was an ‘obsessive collector’ of fountain pens. So that’s one more high profile fountain pen collector in Hyderabad to talk about.

THE SUNDAY HAUL

2011-11-04T12:37:00.001+05:30

Normally I do no find anything I read in ‘The Hindu’ that makes me go to the extent of dashing off a letter to the editor protesting against the inaccuracies. Last week however there were two occasions though I haven’t written to the editor. One concerned an item about an official report about the drought in the state that I was personally involved in preparing which ‘The Hindu’ got completely wrong. The other was a feature in ‘Downtown’ supplement on Sunday which had the headline- ‘Sunday Book Market Loses Its Sheen.’ For the first time in my life I thought of writing to the editor to let him know how wrong the report was but felt the blog was a better place to write about it.

I usually like the thoroughness with which Asif Yar Khan (who did the report) does his reporting. He manages to cover even minor things but on this occasion he seems to have got it wrong. Anyone who is a regular at the Abids book bazaar on Sundays knows the bazaar is thriving with thousands of visitors thronging the place every Sunday to pick up books. Though the number of sellers may have gone down slightly there is no decrease in the number of books. Not many have an idea of the kind of treasures that one can find at Abids. Last week, I had another occasion for such an experience.

Sometime last month I had come across a list of books that were ‘out of print’ and for which people were ready to pay hundreds of dollars for. One of the books was Kyle Onstott’s ‘Mandingo’ that sounded familiar. I remembered seeing it at Abids. I was intrigued to read that a new copy of ‘Mandingo’ would fetch nearly three hundred dollars. I somehow knew I would find it some day. I was certain of it because I had seen the book on the pavements at Abids not very long ago. Last Sunday I found ‘Mandingo.’ I wasn’t looking for it for the money but for the thrill of tracking down something I believed I’d come across sooner or later.

Since about a month I’d been discussing the list of out of print books with Uma Shanker. Apart from “Mandingo’ the list featured Stephen King’s ‘Rage’ and ‘Pretty Pony,’ ‘Promise Me Tomorrow’ by Nora Roberts and other books I had not read about. I told him I had seen Mandingo and secretly wished I could find it if only to prove that I wasn’t boasting. Coincidentally, Uma Shanker was with me when I chanced upon ‘Mandingo’ and got it for just fifty rupees. I have no idea how much that copy might fetch but I do not have any plans to part with it.

However, ‘Mandingo’ wasn’t the first find of Sunday. I got a good copy of Helen Dunmore’s ‘Love of Fat Men’ which is a collection of these nineteen short stories: Love of Fat Men, Batteries, Short Days Long Nights, The Bridge Painter, Ullikins, Paivi, etc. I read on the book that Helen Dunmore is a winner of the Orange Prize. I got the book for only twenty rupees.

But the real find of the Sunday was the collection of short stories of Ernest Hemingway ‘The First Forty Nine Stories’ which was in a good condition. The collection includes some of Hemingway’s famous stories llike The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Indian Camp, Hills Like White Elephants, The Killers, Ten Indians and a lot many other stories that I haven’t read like: The Capital of the World, Old Man at the Bridge, Up in Michigan, On the Quai at Smyrna, The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife and so on. All forty nine stories for just fifty rupees.

Now someone tell me where the sheen has gone.

Hyderabad Happenings

2011-11-01T15:39:00.002+05:30

Some times I feel like pitying the Jubilee Hills/ Banjara Hills crowd for some of the travails they go through, especially travails involving food and eating out. I’m amazed how they manage to go through life when there are eating joints sprouting up around them all the time. There are hotels and restaurants opening in their locality with such an unfailing regularity that they hardly have any time to catch their breath.

Not more than three weeks (time taken for an egg to hatch) must have passed since a foodie joint- XPRS- of the Venky’s Group opened in Banjara Hills and now another XPRS branch has popped up in Madhapur, which is, for all purposes, the backyard of Jubilee Hills.

Now anyone of the JH crowd feels that the XPRS in Banjara Hills is too far away or full then they can always go to the Madhapur branch to fill up. One must actually commend Venky’s for being so thoughtful and making things easy for the this crowd. Anyway, I hope Venky’s opens its next XPRS branch this side of the city though it doesn’t matter a bit since we’ve got our own Irani joints and other places.

Talking of food and eating out reminds me of the ad I saw for ‘Nature’s Basket’ where the Jubilee Hills/Banjara Hills crowd can shop for some exotic stuff to take home and eat on the rare occasions whey they are not eating out. I read somewhere that the Godrej Group opened a food store called ‘Nature’s Basket’ somewhere on Road No. 10, Banjara Hills. I read that the store stocks thirty varieties of cheese, cold cuts ( I do not even know what that is) and other such stuff.

Anyway, I don’t grudge them what they eat and probably I too wouldn’t mind eating such stuff provided it is actually edible and provided someone sells it on a bandi.

A FESTIVE HAUL

2011-10-28T09:00:00.001+05:30

Sometimes, though very rarely, it so happens that though I do not purchase any books at the Abids book bazaar on Sundays I end up with a lot of books in other ways. Last Sunday at Abids I picked up only one book but I got a pile of new and old books as presents. I got a total of ten books from family and friends. I was overjoyed at this unexpected shower of presents that included titles by two of my favourite writers- Dave Barry and Robert B.Parker.

Though I knew that because of the festival shopping there wouldn’t be many booksellers at Abids I nevertheless went out of habit. Almost all the sellers were present but not at their usual places. I saw a book that I thought I'd buy. It was Lee Zacharias’ ‘Lessons’ that I got for only twenty rupees. I picked up the book solely because was a Penguin title and the blurbs on the back cover were irrestible. On my urging Uma bought a nice Borzoi edition of Le Carre’s ‘Smiley’s People’ that I read a long time ago.

This Diwali was special to me in more than one way. All my brothers were flying in for the festival. On Saturday one of my brothers brought these three new titles by Robert B Parker for me:

‘Cold Service’

‘Painted Ladies’

‘Rough Weather’
This takes the tally of Spenser titles that I have to read by six.

Just the day before day I had received a parcel from Mumbai. A friend in Mumbai sent the following titles:

‘Catcher in the Rye’ by JD Salinger

‘A Book of English Essays’ edited by WE Williams

‘Once Was Bombay’ by Pinki Virani

‘The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Stories' by Rudyard Kipling

‘Inspector Ghote Draws a Line’ by HRF Keating

Another brother who arrived from the US brought me the book I had asked him to get for me. Ever since I read about this title I madly wanted to read. Now that I have Dave Barry’s ‘I’ll Mature When I’m Dead’ I will begin it after finishing the book I am reading right now. Right now I am reading Christopher Hitchen’s memoir ‘Hitch-22’ though I do not have the book with me. One of my brother brought his Kindle along with him and I am reading this book on the Kindle. It is a first for me, reading a book on Kindle Kindle is amazing and my mind reels with the possibilities that it presents. More on the Kindle sometime later.

My New Bookshelf

2011-10-25T15:31:00.002+05:30

If there are too many books in your life, there are bound to be bookshelves in it sooner or later. For long I’ve lived with just one bookshelf and now, in a move that could be said to be the best thing I’ve done this year, I had a new 8 x 4 ft bookshelf that I put in our drawing room. It holds around five hundred books, which is almost half my book collection.

It looks so good I now spend half my time before the bookshelf wondering how I managed to buy so many books and how I am going to find time to read them. The new bookshelf has brightened up our Diwali because now there are no corners or tables cluttered with books. It is the best gift I could give myself this Diwali.

Wish you all a very happy Diwali.

The Man with Two Mont Blancs

2011-10-21T11:34:00.000+05:30

Many people are under the impression that government employees do not work or have a comfortable 9 to 5 routine without any hassles. Nothing can be far from the truth. If one happens to be working in the Secretariat and especially in a Department like the one I am in, there are no fixed timings, no holidays, and no peace of mind either, most of the time. Another hair raising thing is that, out of the blue, you will be told to prepare a report and meet someone very high up, on a holiday with just an hour’s notice. Something like that happened to me last Sunday minutes after I had returned from a nice, relaxed time watching the sunrise on the Necklace Road.

I was told I had to come to the office, prepare a report and show it to a top official who too had come to the office on the Sunday. Normally, I get irritated but on Sunday I was in a different state of mind. I set off for the office after breakfast wondering if I would be able to go to Abids later in the afternoon. The preparation of the report might take at the most an hour and I thought I’d be out of the office by noon. The thought that I might be able to spend a couple of hours at Abids before going home for lunch made me work on the report faster. The report in my hand I accompanied one of my bosses to the top official, so at the top that he has three people handling the phones in his office.

Many believe that bureaucrats are not only boring but also boring dressers. But some, especially those at the top, wear real classy clothes complete with classy accessories. The officer I went to meet turned out to be such a person. He was dignity personified. He wore sober but elegant clothes but it did not catch my attention as much as the two Mont Blancs in his pocket did. Now, it is very, very rare to come across Mont Blanc sporting people in Hyderabad. Though I am aware that a few bureaucrats have a weakness for good pens I hadn’t so far met anyone who had a Mont Blanc in the pocket.

Though it may sound a bit too far fetched, I believe that those who write with fountain pens are a different breed altogether. They look at the world with a different eye. This officer I went to meet not only asked me to sit but he also offered tea. It is not the usual custom for top officials to ask others not of their rank to sit so I was a bit taken aback. Not only that he looked at me like I was his equal when I explained some points in the report. I wonder how he would have viewed me if I had my Mont Blanc in the pocket.

Though I was glad that I had met a gentlemanly officer I was a bit low that I couldn’t get to do my weekly bookhunt at Abids. It was too late by the time I got home and I also missed ‘Just Books’ on NDTV Profit. Some days aren’t just perfect.

A Dose of Calm

2011-10-18T08:56:00.003+05:30

I have a once-a-month routine of going out to a scenic place early in the morning to watch the sunrise. It was sometime in June that I had been to the Necklace Road to watch the sunrise over the Hussainsagar Lake on a Sunday morning. That was almost six months ago and the cloud of gloom that always seems to hang over my head had grown too large for me to handle. I had not found the time to indulge in this once-a-month routine for months either because I was too busy or the weather was not favorable. Anyway, I had been restless to do it so last Sunday I went to Necklace Road at the crack of dawn to catch some solitude before the rest of the city woke up.

One of the first things I noticed on reaching the lake were the islands, large ones, of the hyacinth that covered most of the lake. I don’t say the water of Hussainsagar is clean but at least it doesn’t have scum floating on the surface all the time. But this Sunday there was enough vegetation on top to call it a marsh. The other thing was that most of the metal railing skirting the lake’s edge at the place where I usually sit was missing. The last time I had seen it but only a small portion was missing but this time the gap was too big to be ignored. Then there were the fountains shooting up thick jets of water into the air. The water falling back on the surface set off gentle ripples which made the hyacinth islands gently bob up and down.
However, the sight of the sun slowly appearing over the rim of the lake made me forget everything. I sometimes feel that one should watch either the sunrise or sunset everyday in order to feel alive. It was a great sight to watch the sun make its way up into the sky first as a pinkish orb and then gradually turn into a golden disc. I sat there for some time taking in the scene and trying to get rid of some of my gloom. Feeling strangely peaceful in the tranquil setting I decided I’d repeat this routine every month without fail. I’d give anything for that feeling of calm that washes over one at that place so early in the morning.

At Adarsh With the Papers

After a peaceful three quarters of an hour mulling over everything happening or not happening in my life I shifted to Phase II of the routine. I settled down at one of the tables at Adarsh and opened the Sunday papers. I started with the Deccan Chronicle reading the main paper, the Sunday supplement and also the City supplement for almost an hour poring over each and every item. Surprisingly now I do not remember anything I read except a review in the books section. A reviewer called Sunrita Sen had a nice piece on Michael Ondaatje’s ‘The Cat’s Table.’ The book review made me decide to look for ‘The English Patient’ and buy it the next time I find it at a second hand bookstore or at Abids.

The couple of hours spent at Necklace Road watching the sunrise and at Adarsh poring over the papers in the quiet Irani joint left me in such a peaceful state of mind that I did not get irritated when I was asked to come to the office later in the day. It meant that I had to miss my weekly trip to Abids to hunt for books but I did not mind. Abids can wait but the Government cannot. I did not know then that later in the day I’d be meeting a top official who sported two Mont Blanc pens. Actually there were three Mont Blancs but I will write about it in the next post on Friday.

THE SUNDAY HAUL

2011-10-14T10:57:00.002+05:30

With the two books I bought on Sunday the tally of books I bought so far this year has grown to 82. If I buy two books a week for the remaining 13 weeks I’ll be touching more than hundred books. Though it is a considerably smaller haul than some of the haul in the previous years, I do not want to cross the 85 mark. I plan to cut down on my book purchases in the coming weeks in order to increase the tally of books that I’ve read so far. As on date I’ve read only forty books this year and this figure might touch sixty by the end of the year if I really speed up my reading. Though I do not know if I can stick to this goal, that’s the plan for now- to buy fewer books but read more of them.

Non-fiction titles number more than fiction titles this year. In non-fiction, travel books account for most of the titles. In 2911 I’ve found some very good travel books by well known writers especially Pico Iyer. Though I haven’t done any kind of travel so far this year, I’ve picked up fourteen travel titles till date. Last Sunday I added another title to this bunch.

At Abids I found Saul Bellow’s ‘To Jerusalem and Back; A Personal Account’ on the pavement. I got the slim, 182-page book for only twenty rupees. Maybe I should plan my reading so that I read all books on travel at one go though it sounds like a bad idea. Anyway, since it is a short book I am thinking of reading it sometime next week since it won’t take more than a couple of days to finish it.

Just before I left I came to know from the Best Books guy that their sale at YMCA was still on and that Monday was the last day. The sale was supposed to end on the last day of September and it was a pleasant surprise to know I can check it out one last time. I did not plan to buy anything but there was a title that I had wanted to check out since I had been eyeing it since long. In the evening I went to the sale at YMCA at Secunderabad and saw all the titles I couldn’t buy. There was Kunal Basu’s ‘Racists,’ Joan Didion’s ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ that I have two copies of with me and other books. When I checked for James Patterson’s books I saw that ‘Along Came the Spider’ was still in the stack. I decided to buy it though it was for Rs 95, and so ‘Along Came the Spider’ became the second haul of the day.

Two More Eateries Open

2011-10-11T11:17:00.000+05:30

Unless you live in the Banjara Hills/Jubilee Hills areas you really don’t have any idea of how lucky you are. While elsewhere in the city everyone’s life has been turned upside down with the strike, things seem to be pretty normal for the Banjara Hills/Jubilee Hills crowd, at least as far as opening of new restaurants is concerned.

Somebody actually was considerate enough not to deprive the Hills crowd of their only source of entertainment- gorging on food in a new eatery. Last week yet another new joint opened in Banjara Hills. ‘XPRS’ from the Venky’s Group opened its doors to the hungry hordes bringing much needed joy to this eternally famished crowd. For those who do not know about the Venky’s group these are the chicken feed people now into a lot of poultry related stuff. It is quite natural that they came up with this idea of having a joint serving mostly chicken items. For those who really want to know where exactly ‘XPRS’ is located, it is in MS Towers on Road No. 1, Banjara Hills.

Even before I could fully recover from the news about the opening of ‘XPRS’ came the news of the opening of yet another new eating joint in Hyderabad. The thing is no one has any idea where it is located. One would have thought that ‘The Hindu’ newspaper trains its reporters properly but whoever filed the report in ‘Downtown’ supplement about the opening of ‘Jalpaan’ forgot a basic thing. Nowhere in the report was it mentioned where ‘Jalpaan’ was located as if the readers have to guess it. It also makes me wonder how the subeditors missed it. Whatever it is, folks, there’s another new vegetarian eatery in Hyderabad you have to search for.

I’m willing to bet that ‘Jalpaan’ is also located in the Banjara/Jubilee Hills area because no matter how crowded it is with countless eateries there’s always space for another new joint there.

A DOUBLE POST FRIDAY: POST-2-- The Sunday Haul

2011-10-07T11:21:00.002+05:30

Were it not for the time that goes into the writing of this blog, the novel and other writing I’d have easily read at least two medium sized books every week. But I am not able to match the rate of my reading with the number of books I’m regularly picking up at Abids on Sundays. I find no less than two books every Sunday. Last Sunday too I found two books, both of them good ones.

The first find was a book that I’d told myself I’d buy the moment I saw it even if it was in a bookstore. But I didn’t have to buy it at a regular bookstore. At Chikkadpally on Sunday I spotted Siddhartha Mukherjee’s ‘The Emperor of All Maladies’ on the pavement. I asked for the price and hesitated wondering if I really wanted to spend Rs 200 on a 571- pages book about something dreaded like cancer. An article I read about Siddhartha Mukherjee I read somewhere after he won the Pulitzer Prize for the book had fired me up and made me decide about buying the book. Only then I did not know the book would be 570 pages long. I continued to hesitate and the seller lowered the price to Rs 180. Maybe he would have further reduced the price if I hesitated any longer but by then I decided to buy it. Though I am happy I found the book I wonder when I will finally get to read the book.

Another find on Sunday was Julian Barnes’ ‘Flaubert’s Parrot’ that I got for only Rs 20. Compared to the first find of Sunday this book is only 190 pages long but it also has endorsements by writers like Joseph Heller, Graham Greene, John Irving, John Fowles, Fran Liebowitz and others I did not know. It left me with little choice but to buy it and I was glad it came cheap.

Another happy coincidence was meeting another member of the small group that reads this blog regularly. It was a pleasant surprise to meet Srinath who picked me out from the crowd at Abids just like that. I felt I had done my duty when I helped him pick up a good copy of Pico Iyer’s ‘Global Soul.’ I hope he is hooked to Abids by now and continues to come.

A DOUBLE POST FRIDAY: POST-1:Another Sale Haul

2011-10-07T11:19:00.003+05:30

There aren’t many instances in the past when I did not visit a book sale no less than half a dozen times while it ran. There are even fewer occasions when I did not return home from such a sale without at least a couple of books in my arms. It was no different during the recent sale of second hand books by Best Books that was in the YMCA at Secunderabad from 15th of September to the first week of October. I had been there earlier a couple of days after it opened and returned with a nice haul of books by Pico Iyer and Joan Didion. During the next visit I found two more good books.

The first book was another Pico Iyer title. I found ‘The Lady and the Monk’ tucked away somewhere in a corner. However it did not come cheap. I had to pay Rs 175 for it but I guess everything by Pico Iyer is priceless. ‘The Lady and the Monk’ is about Pico Iyer’s visit to Kyoto to live in a monastery and learn about Zen Buddhism. I am just raring to read this book but I know I have to wait for some time since there is almost the equivalent of a library at home waiting to be read. I felt doubly lucky finding another Pico Iyer title days after I found ‘Sun After Dark’ on my first visit to the sale.

There are a few travel writers whose books I want to read but whose books I found it difficult to get. One of the names is Freya Stark and I was almost certain that I wouldn’t find any of her books anywhere in Hyderabad much less in a second hand book sale. So when I found Freya Stark’s ‘The Southern Gates of Arabia’ I could only stifle an urge to scream out aloud. It was funny how I was finding only non-fiction titles especially travel books of late. On the first visit I had also found Joan Didion’s ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ and now I found Stark’s book. The book was in a good condition and I got it for Rs 150 which was a bit steep.

On another visit in the company of Daniel I found another book that I had been looking for since a long time. I found Noah Lukeman’s ‘The First Five Pages’ and got it for Rs 125. I hope now at least I will be able to learn what is wrong with my manuscript and fix it after reading ‘The First Five Pages’ right away. Daniel also gave me three books- Morris West’s ‘Summer of the Red Wolf,’ HRF Keating’s ‘The Good Detective’ and also James Patterson’s ‘Four Blind Mice.’ I plan to begin reading James Patterson’s books with ‘Along Came a Spider’ that I have yet to pick up.

So it was books, books and more books in the past week.

Books or Beer?

2011-10-05T12:38:00.000+05:30

Like there weren’t enough liquor bars in Hyderabad I saw that a new one has come up at a most unlikely place. It is a place that happens to hold some nice memories for me. I have seen Irani hotels turn into shoe stores, I have seen restaurants turn into readymade cloth stores and I have seen grocery stores make way for hair cutting saloons. But I’ve never seen a bookstore turn into a bar. Who would have thought that where once stood a bookstore, a bar would come up in its place? Not me. I for one did not expect that a bar would come up in place of a bookstore that I often visited in the past. But then, this is Hyderabad where one can expect anything to happen.

Sometime in the early nineties, when the only fashionable (read modern) bookstore was Walden at Begumpet, Gangarams of Bangalore decided to come to Hyderabad. Gangarams opened a branch (maybe its only branch outside Bangalore) in Secunderabad in the basement of a building complex right opposite Garden Restaurant at Clock Tower circle. It was an odd location for a bookstore, for sure, but the store flourished for more than a couple of years. A chance encounter with the owner of the store, Chaturbhuj Gangaram, in the first week of its opening turned into something of a friendship. Chaturbhuj Gangaram was a softspoken person with a terrific knowledge of the book selling business. He told me that he had decided to move to Hyderabad on account of his children’s health problems. When he learnt that I was a copywriter he asked me to do the copy for Gangarams. He was happy with the ads my agency did for him and I in turn was happy with the 20% discount he gave me on my purchases. He told me that the margin on books was 30% which was sort of an eye opener for me. It was in Gangarams that I bought my first Dave Barry title- ‘Dave Barry Goes to Japan.’

However, something went wrong somewhere and the store went into a decline. I had left advertising to join the government. I was posted to a far away and remote place which meant I could visit Hyderabad once in a while. One day I learnt that Chaturbhuj Gangaram had sold away the place and moved to Bangalore. For sometime the store ran under a different name, then closed down and opened again but it wasn’t the same. With competition from Odyssey, Crossword, and other stores this oddly located bookstore did not last long. Nobody seemed to mourn the closing down of the bookstore because in its place, something of great interest to Hyderabadis had come up- a bar and restaurant.

Last week while passing through the Clock Tower square I noticed a board that said ‘Madhushala Bar & Restaurant’ at the same place where once the board of Gangarams stood. From ‘Gangarams Bookstore’ to ‘Madhushala Bar & Restaurant’ hasn’t taken long. It perhaps is a pointer to what the average Hyderabadi likes- books or beer?

The Sunday Haul

2011-09-30T11:24:00.001+05:30

One of my writerly ambitions is to write a complete movie screenplay. I had this ambition in mind long before the idea of writing a novel occurred to me. Though the novel is almost done the screenplay remains to be completed. So this ambition burns inside rather intensely. I have a couple of stories in mind that I have to put in the form of a screenplay. Until recently I had no idea of what a screenplay was and how it is written. Sometime back I found Syd Field’s books about screenwriting and read them. Syd Field’s books have been helpful in giving me an idea about how a screenplay is written. I have also a copy of Robert McKee’s ‘Story’ that I asked someone to get for me during one of those phases when I was serious about writing my screenplay. I started, hesitantly though, work on my screenplay that is still far from completion.

Though I do not watch many movies I like to read about movies, about reviews and almost everything connected with movies. I have even a couple of books by movie stars (David Niven, Kirk Douglas, Dirk Bogarde,) movie critics that I found at Abids and elsewhere. I have picked up quite a few screenplays too at Abids where last week I found Syd Field’s ‘Going to the Movies.’ Earlier I had seen the same book at a secondhand bookseller but the price was somewhere over four hundred rupees. It was way beyond my budget so I did not buy it which was a smart thing to do since I found the same book and paid only sixty rupees for it last Sunday. The book is in good condition and I’m already itching to begin reading it right away. Maybe that will spur me to finish the script I am working on intermittently at present. Despite reading so many actual screenplays and books on screenwriting I still feel there’s something I have to learn.

Coincidentally, a few hours after I bought the book, I read in Eenadu about Robert McKee’s ‘Story Seminar.’ I read that the seminar is proposed to be organized at Ramoji Film City sometime February next. I do want to attend the four day seminar but the fee is putting me off. The fees is somewhere around Rs 33000/ if paid by end of January 2012 and Rs 38605 after January 31. I am at a loss to decide whether to shell out the money and attend it though I know the seminar might be of use to me in writing the screenplay. I hope I will take a decision before I chew out all the nails on my fingers.

Goodbye, Airtel. Hello, BSNL

2011-09-27T12:35:00.001+05:30

Thanks to Airtel, since the past one year, every time I got a call on my mobile phone not only my family, but my immediate neighbours and practically everyone who lives in our lane knew it was my office calling. Every time my mobile rang I dropped whatever I was doing at that moment- getting into clothes, having breakfast, reading the paper- and rushed out of the room, out of the house, out of the gate and out on the road in our lane and try to catch the signal on my mobile. This is because my service provider is Airtel whose signal is so bad that I am sure even Airtel folks find it difficult to talk with each other on their mobile phones. Several times I wondered if I should seek out the nearest Airtel mobile tower and climb to its top to get the signal and have a clear talk.

I am sure I am not the only Airtel customer to have contemplated climbing mobile towers in order to catch the signal. One only has to read the papers to discover how many complaints there are about Aitel’s lousy service. One would have expected Airtel to pay attention to improving their service but instead they are spending the money on sponsoring events and also commissioning interesting ads as if that would somehow help the customer. Anyway, there are a few reasons why I am terribly angry with Airtel.

One such reason is that every month I received a rather joyously worded message from Airtel saying- ‘Airtel Radio is renewed and you have been charged Rs 30 for 30 days and 30 minutes free.’

Earlier I used to get this message before I got the previous message:

‘Aitel Radio will be renewed in 3 days. You will be charged Rs 30 for 30 days with 60 Free minutes of music. To unsubscribe call xxxxx’

These messages came without fail every month like I had nothing else to do all day except listen to the radio on my mobile. I am amazed that the Aitel folks think that despite TV, the net and other distractions there are people, especially Airtel customers, who still love the radio. As for me the last time I listened to the radio was sometime back in the early 80’s. That too was by accident. Dad had just got a new emergency lamp that also had a fan and other things. When I fiddled with the switches the radio came on and that is how I knew it also had a radio. I haven’t heard a song or anything on the radio since then. I haven’t also seen an actual radio set for decades now.

Anyway, so when I got those messages asking me to renew Airtel Radio I did not want to. I did not even know that my lousy Samsung mobile phone was also capable of radio facility. I tried to call the number they gave in the message to unsubscribe. Needless to say, no one responded on that number and three days later I would get the message that my Airtel Radio was renewed and that Rs 30 have been charged to my account.

After a couple of months of this Airtel simply messaged me that Airtel Radio was renewed and Rs 30 was charged to my account without even giving me the advance notice they used to send earlier. Maybe the intelligent folks at Airtel thought it wasn’t worth asking me beforehand if I was interested in renewing since they anyway wanted to add Rs 30 to their kitty. This, naturally, enraged me no end.

Everyone in the office had Airtel connections. Some clever guy at Airtel must have figured out that since all our connections are paid by the Government we wouldn’t mind a piddling Rs 30 being added to the bill. How wrong they were! We decided we’d go for number portability and switch to another service provider. Sometime last month we initiated the process. The Airtel guys panicked when we asked for the connections to be transferred to BSNL. Someone from Airtel actually called me up and asked why I was switching. I told him their reception is so lousy, that I get probably a million marketing messages everyday and also told him about the Radio. He had no answer to it and simply said thanks and put down the phone. I thought they had accepted our request but no, I was wrong.

Our request for portability was turned down on the grounds that there was some technical mismatch. We tried again, this time with BSNL guys on our side. The second time too Airtel refused the request saying we had pending payments issues. The third time however, they couldn’t refuse. The BSNL people took up the issue and somehow we were able to switch to BSNL. I am so happy since I can now take calls from my bedroom at any time of the day.

I wouldn’t have minded if the Airtel folks used the money they took surreptitiously to improve the service. But instead what do we get? Ads like the ‘Har Friend Zaroori Hotha Hai’ (which is a wonderful ad, by the way) and news that they are sponsoring some event. When will it get through the thick skulls at Airtel that offering better service to the customers will get them more customers than running creative ads on television.

To cut a long story short, I now have good old BSNL as the service provider for my office connection too. The BSNL network signal is so strong I am sure even if I am a couple of miles underground I will be able to talk with anyone. Now I can be somewhere deep inside my house and talk on my mobile phone instead of coming out on the street and shouting my head off.

Good riddance, Airtel.

FRIDAY DOUBLE POST Post 2: The Sunday Haul

2011-09-23T10:34:00.002+05:30

Only after I reached Abids last Sunday morning and saw all those books laid out on the pavements did I realize why I had not been in my element since two weeks. I had missed the sight, the smell and the buzz of the second hand book sellers at Abids for two consecutive Sundays. One Sunday I was down with fever and the other Sunday the Ganesh procession blocked out everything. So for almost two weeks I went around suffering from some kind of withdrawal symptoms though I had picked up quite a good book on the Sunday of the Ganesh procession. Anyway, the good news is that this Sunday the Abids books sellers were present in full strength and all was well in my world.

One of the biggest attractions of the Abids book market is that the books come very cheap. One can get good, hardcover titles at twenty rupees and sometimes less. Though I had picked up two books at the Best Books sale the other day which left me a bit short on the money front I decided to drop in at Abids if only to soak in the sight of so many books, booksellers and book lovers. However, I found three good books that I couldn’t help picking up if only for the reason that I got them damn cheap. Actually, I picked up four books but the fourth cannot be called a book in the sense it is more an illustrated book meant for children.

The first find was with a seller who had several copies of those books that could have been issued sometime in the late fifties or early sixties. The illustrations on the cover was a give away. Since I was looking for Ted Lewis’ ‘Get Carter’ I patiently sorted through a large pile of books and instead found Graham Greene’s ‘The Quiet American,’ John Steinbeck’s ‘The Wayward Bus,’ and Dashiell Hammett’s ‘The Glass Key.’ I got all three books at a rounded off price of Rs 50 which meant each book cost me a little over fifteen rupees. Considering the titles I do not think I had spent too much.

The fourth find was Maurice Sendak’s ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ which someone a long time had asked me to look for. When I spotted the book I actually leaped to the pavement and pounced on it though it was unlikely anyone could have grabbed it right away. I leafed through the book and found that a few pages had moisture stains but otherwise in good condition. I got the book for thirty rupees and since then have been trying to remember who it was who asked for this book.

But the icing on the cake was the book Uma found for me. He had picked up a Spenser novel from a heap of books selling for twenty rupees. It was Robert B. Parker’s ‘Valediction’ and came from the same heap where we had earlier found ‘Ceremony’ a couple of weeks ago. I am sure if we sift through all the books in that particular heap then maybe I can find a couple more Robert B. Parker titles. That’s what I plan to do next Sunday.

FRIDAY DOUBLE POST- Post-1: The Book Sale Haul

2011-09-23T10:31:00.002+05:30

Imagine breathlessly writing on the blog about waiting eagerly for an event and then forgetting about it altogether. This is what happened to me this month. A week back or so I had posted about getting excited about the sale of Best Books that would begin on 10th September. I remembered it until the ninth of September and afterwards forgot all about it. I wasn’t busy or anything but maybe the noise of all the drums of the Ganesh procession (I live near a temple) must have affected my brain somehow and made me forget. It wasn’t until I read Jai’s blog that I realized that the sale was on.

So without wasting much time I rushed to the sale almost three days after it had started wondering if there’d be any books left for me to pick from. The Best Book sale attracts a lot of book lovers because of the eclectic collection of titles though of late the collection has become old and jaded. This time however, almost all the books were almost new but expensive. I hoped I’d find some really good titles and did not think much about the budget though it was the middle of the month when the wallet goes all skinny. In the past at such sales I have been unable to come out with a couple of books in my hands. On this visit to the sale I picked up two really good titles.

The first book I saw was Pico Iyer’s ‘Sun After Dark’ which picked it up right away. I am a major fan of everything that Pico Iyer has written so far. I have with me ‘Falling Off the Map,’ ‘Video Night in Kathmandu,’ ‘Tropical Classical,’ ‘Global Soul,’ and I was on the look out for his other titles. So when I found ‘Sun After Dark’ I was glad no one had picked it up. ‘Sun After Dark’ is like all Pico Iyer books, a book about travel and has

Feeling very glad after finding ‘Sun after Dark’ I looked around hoping I wouldn’t find another good book because what I had to pay for it would empty my wallet. I saw plenty of books I already have copies of like Joan Didion’s ‘The Year of Magical Thinking.’ I pulled out the book underneath and almost jumped up in joy. Before me was a book that I had been looking sine a long time. At last I found Joan Didion’s ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ that I decided to buy though it would make an enormous dent in my wallet. I got the book for and did not feel any regret. However, I decided not be anywhere near YMCA, Secunderabad where the sale is, for the next couple of weeks or at least until end of September when the sale too ends.

Back home with the books I opened them and read the first few pages. There was a poem on the first page of STB. The poem was TS Eliot’s and I discovered how two titles got their names. ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ is a line in the same poem and in another line there is the phrase ‘Widening Gyre’ which is the title of Robert B Parker’s early novel. By the way there was only one Spenser title at the sale but I did not buy it expecting to come across a cheaper version of the same title somewhere at Abids very soon.

Azhar’s Tragedy is Our Tragedy

2011-09-20T11:42:00.004+05:30

Marriage brings a change in some people, much more than they expected. But the event that completely transforms almost everyone is when people become parents. This sudden and drastic change is not difficult to understand. The day one becomes a parent is the day there’s another life you are responsible for. Out of this responsibility grows a fear, a fear that seizes every parent from Day One. It is the fear of losing one’s child. It is this fear that is top most in every parent’s mind overriding every other fear, even one’s own death. It is this fear that leads us to do or not to do a lot of things. This is the fear that gives the sort of nightmares that the parent wishes and prays does not ever come true. So when another parent goes through that nightmare, one involving the death of one’s child it is hard not to feel the grief.

There were quite a few occasions when I’ve been moved to tears on learning about the death of strangers, especially children. But this was the first time I found it difficult to stop the tears. Last Friday when I learnt that Azharuddin’s son had died I couldn’t help becoming terribly depressed. There was something about that tragedy that affected me very much. I don’t know Azharuddin personally and I had not seen any picture of Ayazuddin, his son, until last week. But I followed the news about the youngster in the hospital anxiously. Like everyone I hoped he would come out safely. More than anything I hoped he’d survive, that he’d live. But he didn’t, and it was hard to accept.

Usually, for parents it is common to feel sad when something bad happens to other children of their own kids’ age. As a parent of a thirteen year old kid I am not different. The sorrow and the grief arises from imagining what that young boy must have gone through all those days when he was in hospital unable to talk with anyone, trapped in a fearful darkness he couldn’t understand. I shudder to think how he must have tried to communicate his terror to those who were around him, hoping he’d somehow live. I feel very sorry for the two kids who died too young.

If a total stranger like me is unable to come to terms with it I really do not know how Azhar’s family will live with it. Not only will Azhar find it difficult to come to terms with his tragedy there will be another thing he might have to deal with- guilt. When something goes wrong with one’s kids the first thought that the parents have is ‘am I responsible in anyway for it?’ It will be tough for the families to live with the grief as well as the guilt all their lives.

But I wish all of us parents with young kids realize certain things. I hope we make our kids realize that they mean more than anything to us. I hope we tell all our kids the truth about alcohol, drugs, and the risky behavior that goes with it. It isn’t that we should not trust our children but one is not sure what will happen the next moment. I hope we make them realize that until they come back home we live in a state of fear. I hope we teach them that life is more important than anything, more important than going at high speeds. I wish we could teach them to stop and listen to what the traffic cops tell you all the time that ‘speed thrills but also kills.’

I hope we realize our responsibilities as parents and say no to certain things that our kids demand. I hope we know what they are and tell them where we draw the line.

The Sunday Haul and Etc

2011-09-16T07:00:00.000+05:30

Two weeks without going to Abids on my Sunday hunt for books would be tough for me to take. The Sunday before I was down with fever and couldn’t go to Abids. Last Sunday because of the Ganesh procession though it looked like there wouldn’t be the weekly book bazaar I nevertheless went to Abids. I found not a single book seller and instead I found barricades, cops all over, and an air of festivity. Uma too had come down and we both tried to drown our disappointment in coffee at the Taj Mahal.

However, all was not lost. Actually, while coming to Abids I had stopped at Chikkadpally on the way. About five people sell books at Chikkadpally on Sundays and three of them have a pretty decent collection from where I have picked up some good books. One of my recent buys was VS Naipaul’s ‘A House for Mr Biswas’ sometime ago. But last Sunday at one such seller I picked up another good title- ‘The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories’ edited by Stephen Alter and Wimal Dissanayake. The collection had twenty short stories by some of the famous names in Indian writing like Ismat Chugtai, T. Sivasankara Pillai, Amrita Pritam, RK Narayan, Nirmal Verma, and a few others I’m not aware of like Chunilal Mehta, Avinash Dolas etc. I read Gangadhar Gadgil’s ‘The Dog that Ran in Circles’ in it. . I was damn glad I found the book. I got it for ninety rupees which is a bit steep. It made up for any disappointment at the lack of sellers at Abids.

Another book I saw at Chikkadpally was Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ that was offered for hundred and fifty rupees but I did not bite. Maybe some other time I might pick it up if it is still around. There was a book of Saadat Hasan Manto’s stories translated by Rakshanda Jalil that I’d been eyeing for quite sometime now. I haven’t picked up because of the steep price.

JUST BOOKS
Later in the afternoon, having missed watching it in the evening on Saturday, I caught up with Just Books on NDTV Profit. The ‘What’s on My Bookshelf’ segment had Aatish Tasseer showing off his collection of books. The only book I had was VS Naipaul’s ‘A House for Mr Biswas’ and the rest were books I had not read. The other half of the episode featured Wajahat Habibullah on his book on Kashmir that he wrote. Just then there was a power cut and that was the end of Just Books for me.

THE BEST BOOKS SALE
Until I got a mail from Jai the other day that he had picked up quite a lot of books at the Best Books sale I wasn’t aware that the sale had started. Though I had written here on this blog that the sale was slated to begin from the tenth of September I completely forgot about it. Usually they put out an advertisement in the local papers but this time I did not come across any. Anyway, I have missed out on four days of the sale which means all the good books might have been snapped up by others smarter than me. I am going today and I hope I will find some books that I hope will blow away the cloud of disappointment that is hanging over me at this moment at not having been to Abids for two successive Sundays.

THE LITERARY REVIEW

The Sunday before there was the Literary Review in ‘The Hindu’ that I keenly look forward to reading. In it I read that the Literary Review is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. I am amazed that The Hindu has persisted with it for so long. It deserves a lot of praise for bringing out Literary Review regularly. Literary Review is something that people who love reading, books and literature will enjoy. I also read with great interest about the two Literary Conclaves (Lit For Life) at Delhi later this month and in October at Chennai where the winner of The Hindu Fiction Literary Prize for Best Fiction 2011 would be announced. I wish I could be at Chennai on October 29-30 for the event.

My Two Latest Lovelies

2011-09-13T20:44:00.002+05:30

It is quite difficult describing the way one feels to possess something one has only dreamt about until then, especially if it is something highly unaffordable for the likes of me. It feels different to own a luxury item one hasn’t paid for. Every time I take out the Mont Blanc that I got as a gift and look at it, I feel like going down on my knees and saying a prayer of thanks. Getting that beautiful fountain pen as a gift was something of a major miracle of my life, one that perhaps might lead to another. However, apart from the envious looks it generates a Mont Blanc also has its downside.

A Mont Blanc, needless to say is more than an object d’art. It is a glorious tool that writes like a dream, gliding on the paper like silk. While writing with it one (at least for me) feels like one can write stuff that will bring the awards. Ironically, I do not write with it as often. Somehow I cannot get myself to write with that magnificent pen every day. I feel it is too precious a thing to use to write the sort of stuff I do if you get my drift. There’s another reason why I do not write with it. I scribble quite a lot everyday, sometimes filling up nearly five pages of, usually, nonsense. Given the kind of writing I do I have to pause to refill my Mont Blanc after just a couple of paragraphs. I would be using up at least one bottle of Mont Blanc ink every month if I use the pen to write regularly. In case you did not know a bottle of Mont Blanc ink costs nearly nine hundred rupees. One can imagine the size of the hole it will make in my wallet if I write with my Mont Blanc everyday. However, I do love my Mont Blanc Meisterstuck. While I love everything about the Mont Blanc, the sleek, light body, the shape, the fit, and especially the nib, I do not like its filling mechanism. It is a pain to fill the ink. I am a simple sort of chap and want everything to be simple. So I am always on the look out for a pen with a smooth nib and one that has an open barrel without any fancy filling mechanism.

The problem with other handmade fountain pens that I own is while they are great to look at and hold their nibs are almost third rate. When I read on Biswanath Ghosh’s blog about the Wality pens with Sheaffer nibs that he bought at Chennai I was keen to get one for myself. Recently one of my friends happened to visit Chennai and I asked her to get three such pens for me from Gem & Co. I was told that Gem & Co was no longer fitting Sheaffer nibs to Wality pens and instead I could get Gama pens with the Sheaffer nibs. I agreed. After a long wait I got my three Gama pens- two blue and one steel bodied fountain pen, fitted with Sheaffer nibs with medium point. It was an agonizing wait. But it was worth the wait because they are exactly what I was looking for all these days. They are of the right weight, size and also they write very smoothly. I had planned to keep all three for myself but I gave away one to a friend. I have decided to keep the blue one at home and the steel bodied one at the office.

However, I found that the Gama fountain pens aren’t so perfect. One problem is that the body is made of plastic which appears to be too fragile. One has to be careful not to drop the pen or use too much force to open it while filling it with ink. Another irritating thing is that they have a starting problem. After keeping aside the pen for a while the nib dries up and one has to shake it or fiddle with the nib to get the ink flowing again. To sort the problem out I took the pen to the experts at Deccan Pen Store. Deccan Pen Stores has experts who can fix any problem with any pen. They told me I may have to replace the plastic feeder with an ebonite feeder. I now want to get ebonite feeders for both the pens but the only problem was that I have to leave the pens with them. They have to make the feeder individually by hand which can take a couple of weeks. One of these days I plan to give one of the pens to Deccan Pen Stores to fit the ebonite feeder while I write with the other pen.

I have to thank a lot of people for bringing these pens to my hands. Thanks, Biswanath Ghosh for giving me the info about Gem 7 Co. Big thanks to Subha for bringing them from Chennai. Thank you, Gem & Co, for making the pens. Thanks, Uma Shanker for the pictures above.

Behind the Scenes of a Rescue

2011-09-09T06:00:00.000+05:30

For all those who get the impression that people in the government, especially in state government, are slow, indifferent, and have thick skins will perhaps change their minds after they read about something what we did last week. What we did last week wasn’t unusual for us in this department but at the same time wasn’t so common. It was also another occasion I got an idea of what lives cops, doctors and all those who work in such professions lead. It was also something that made me a bit proud about my colleagues in the state government. Last week, because of the government’s swift response, three people perhaps lived to see another day.

On Saturday evening I was just about to reach home when I got a call on my mobile. They wanted me back at the office. It was almost eight and I just had a long day at the office and was looking forward to an early dinner and going to bed early as I felt a fever develop. I was told there was a message from one of the districts about people trapped in a river and who had to be rescued. The air force had to be called in, and for those who do not know, such a rescue just doesn’t happen like that. There is a procedure for it which has to be followed no matter what.

To cut a long story short, I returned to office. When I got to the office and had it opened, the message was from Karimnagar about three shepherds trapped after water was released suddenly from a full dam. They could only be airlifted from the swift waters. I had three people in the office to help me. We quickly typed out a message to the control room at Delhi at about half past eight asking for assistance. We called the air force people and gave them the same message. We told the district people that we had passed on their message. In less than half hour Delhi contacted the air force and gave the go ahead for the rescue by the IAF. But it could be done only in the morning since helicopters do not fly in the night. Our jobs done we went back home. There was another hitch which one of my bosses solved by sheer persistence until late in the night.

Next day morning I learnt that even before the IAF choppers took off the district administration got hold of boats and rescued two people. Only one guy couldn’t be rescued by the boat and was left marooned. Only the choppers who got there soon after picked him up and brought him to safety. I had a fear that by morning I would get the news that the three people had been washed away in the darkness. But the story had a happy ending with the three people being rescued.

On Monday there were heaps of messages lying around- the message from Delhi to IAF, the message from IAF to us about the rescue, the message from the district people about how the three people were rescued. I learnt that the local revenue officials spent the whole night by the side of the canal trying to be keep up the morale of the three people out there in the middle of the fast flowing and dangerous waters. We did not do much except transmit the message and I think it is these government people in Karimnagar who deserve the credit.

It felt good to have played a small and insignificant part in the rescue of people who you don’t know and people you may not ever meet.

No Post

2011-09-07T10:05:00.000+05:30

I'm not well. Post appears tomorrow or Friday.

THE SUNDAY HAUL- TWO BOOKS

2011-09-02T08:47:00.000+05:30

A couple of months ago I found a copy of Jonathan Raban’s ‘In Arabia’ at Abids. I did not remember there was a copy of the same book lying unread in some corner of my house. I had picked up the book so long ago that I had completely forgotten about it. But after I bought the recent copy and checked my list I realized I have two copies of the same book which is not unusual with me. Anyway, ‘In Arabia’ is now in one of the heaps of books I keep aside in the hope of reading some time when I have lots of time on hand. Of course, such a thing never happens because I, like everyone else, never have enough time to do anything properly. So I haven’t read ‘In Arabia’ yet. In fact I haven’t sampled Raban’s writing so far though I am aware he is a famous travel writer.

Last Sunday at Abids I found another Jonathan Raban title- ‘Hunting Mister Heartbreak’ a book about Raban’s travels in America. The publisher is Edward Burlingame Books which is an Imprint of HarperCollins. It was lying in a heap of books selling for Rs 30 so I picked it up. It is a hardcover copy with the jacket intact and also in quite good condition. When I looked inside I found that it was a First US Edition and was first published by Collins Harvill in 1990. Anyway, I thought it was a good find, if only I could find the time to read it.

A little before I had found ‘Hunting Mister Heartbreak,’ I found another book that I had missed buying more than a year ago. Coincidentally, this was also a travel book like Raban’s. When I first saw Chris Stewart’s ‘Driving Over Lemons’ I wasn’t very inclined to buy it so I let it go. Recently I read about the book somewhere online. Though I wasn’t exactly looking for it I couldn’t resist picking it up for the reason that it was an excellent copy priced irresistibly- Rs 30. The publisher was an unusual name that I hadn’t heard before- Sort Of Books based in London.

The two book haul wasn’t the only thing that was good about half the Sunday. I had a long chat about writing, books, and such stuff with Uma and Daniel afterwards. Though I wasn’t exactly in sunny moods since I had to go to office later in the afternoon, the company of friends and the talk made up for the disappointment of spending the holiday at work.

A bit of news that I gleaned while chatting with the book sellers was about Best Books’ secondhand book sale. The sale is slated to begin sometime around the tenth of this month (September) and might go on for two weeks. I am eagerly waiting for it since they did not have their usual sale in May. They skipped it this year for some reason. I plan to pick up not more than two books at the sale but I know I will end up buying at least half a dozen books. They put up some really good books at the sale that draws quite an impressive crowd. One has to check out the sale on the first two days to bag some really good titles.

The day before, on Tuesday, I learnt that Amish Tripathi, the author of the bestseller ‘The Immortals of Meluha’ had been to Hyderabad on Monday to launch is latest title. Though I read the papers from end to end I have no idea how I missed reading about this event beforehand. I came to know about it only yesterday after I read it in The Hindu. I have ‘Immortals of Meluha’ that Hari gave me but I am yet to read it.

Wet Blanket Over the City & Another Eatery in Jubilee Hills

2011-08-30T13:02:00.003+05:30

The city appears like someone has thrown a wet blanket over it. Since the past one week or more its been cloudy and raining almost all day. Dark clouds cover the sky all day all week without even a peek of the sun. It was actually depressing weather. No matter how many cups of Irani chai I drink my moods do not seem to improve. I am a kind of sun guy. If the sun is not out then I feel gloomy. As if that wasn’t enough, for the second successive Sunday I had to go to work in the afternoon. Sunday afternoon is the time when I indulge in a rare luxury- of taking a post lunch nap. But no such luxury for me this Sunday as the rains kept us busy. Not only I missed my nap I also missed watching ‘Just Books’ that comes at four pm on Sundays. I couldn’t get to watch it on Saturday either as I was still at office. All this combined to put me in a rather bad mood.

While coming to office on Monday morning I had the first of two realizations of the month. The first realization was that ‘If your Sunday is messed up then the entire week is messed up.’

Normally when I am gloomy I buy books to cheer myself up. Though I had picked up two good books on Sunday morning at Abids I still felt downbeat. I needed something else to cheer me up. Being the end of the month retail therapy was out of the question so that left me with only one option-eating at my favourite Irani joint. So on Monday afternoon, still feeling gloomy, I rode towards Paradise Bakery where I made the second realization of the month: No one weighing less than 55 kgs can eat more than two egg puffs at Paradise Bakery. Since I fall into that weight category I know it after I had two of them. My usual favourite- chota samosas- were not available so I went for the egg puffs. Until recently they were eight rupees a piece but now the price is ten rupees for one. In keeping with the increased price the size of the egg puff too seems to have grown. Each egg puff was a monstrous piece, puffed up like a boat with the egg half in the centre. It took me quite a long time to finish off those followed by a cup of the usual nectar at Paradise. The mood improved a bit after that.

YET ANOTHER EATERY AT JUBILEE HILLS
Talking about eating reminds me of the news item I read on Sunday. I read that Jubilee Hills has another eatery that opened recently. ‘Quiznos’ a US based Sub Quick Service Restaurant, launched its flagship store in the country and it found no other place better suited for it than our own Jubilee Hills (Filmnagar) with its high population of rich and hungry folks. I read that Quiznos would be opening ten more stores across the city by the end of the year but in the next month two of them would be opened at Inorbit Mall and at Infosys, Pocharam Campus.

In case I happen to be in Filmnagar, Jubilee Hills I plan to drop in there and check out the fare, that is, if it isn’t crowded by the ever hungry Jubilee Hills folks who, I am convinced, will be flocking the store at all times of the day like there are no other eateries for miles around.

THE HAUL

2011-08-26T10:27:00.001+05:30

A combination of rain and the Ramzan shopping spree due to which the regular shops were open, resulted in a fruitless visit to Abids. It left a vague dissatisfaction in me returning empty handed from Abids last Sunday. But it gave me a reason to drop in at a bookstore and pick up at least one book. Luckily, on Tuesday afternoon, I was able to complete a personal project which I felt entitled me to buy myself a reward. And the only reward I could think of for myself was a book. So off I went and landed at the MR Bookstore beside the Punjagutta flyover on Wednesday evening. I found a book I had missed during a previous visit to the same store.

Sometime last month or so I had seen Pankaj Mishra’s ‘Butter Chicken in Ludhiana’ at the store but did not buy it. I had been looking for this book since a long time and when I found it I did not feel like buying it, strangely. A couple of weeks later when I dropped in at the store and looked for it I could not locate it anywhere. I had thought it was gone and regretted not buying it the moment I spotted it. But last Wednesday I was quite happy to come across the book on a different shelf. I bought it for Rs 110 which was quite reasonable for a new copy the original price of which was Rs 225. I plan to begin reading it one of these days.

There’s another crime writer appearing on my radar. It is funny how when the eye is searching for the hard to find title or the elusive writer it tends to ignore names that appear again and again everywhere. There are a few writers whose books I see everywhere, every week yet I have not felt the urge to check out their books. James Patterson is one such writer I haven’t paid much attention to all these days till the other week. Recently I read somewhere that James Patterson tops the Forbes list of writers raking in the most moolah, way above Danielle Steele, Stephen King and Stephanie Meyer. Even that bit of news did not make me check out his books. Either I am dumb or trying to be too choosy about my reading but I wish I had looked closely at his books earlier.

The other day I was reading an article by Donald Maas and came across James Patterson again. Maas wrote about Alex Cross, JP’s famous creation and how he built that character. There was the title of a bestseller ‘Along Came a Spider’ that I jotted down. I feel it is better to come across titles of books to be read in this manner than finding them out on lists on the internet. Then yesterday I read an interview of James Patterson in an old issue of ‘The Writer’s Handbok’ of 2002. Here again were a few books of his mentioned including ‘Along Came a Spider.’ It appears James Patterson has a thing for drawing upon nursery rhymes for the titles of his books.

Now I plan to look for books by James Patterson especially ‘Along Came a Spider’ and ‘Kiss the Girls.’ I will read only these two books first and if they are any good as they say I will try to read the rest of the 16 or 17 Alex Cross books. If I can find his first novel- The Thomas Berryman Number- then I hope to read it. Another reason I want to read his books is that he tells people not to read one of his titles ‘Season of the Machete’ which was one of his early works and one that he himself does not like. I definitely decided to read his books when I read that he writes in long hand and doesn’t use a computer. Another reason why I want to read his books is becaue I read that James Patterson was a copywriter who rose up the ladder and became head of JWT. Why is it that most writers I like to read happen to be copywriters?

WASHED OUT SUNDAY

2011-08-23T12:59:00.004+05:30

There is nothing worse, (at least for a government servant I guess,) than waking up to a rain- soaked Sunday morning than being told to come to office. That is what happened to me last Sunday which I now rank as one of the worst Sunday of the year. I had planned to do quite a lot on Sunday- go to Abids, watch Just Books that I missed on Saturday, take a nice post lunch nap, go out with the family in the evening and so on. The moment I got the call from office to come all such plans were swept away in the current of irritation that filled my mind.

If the rain filled morning wasn't enough, the Sunday paper was not delivered until eight in the morning. And when it came it came with the front page sodden. The rain continued to fall until it was time to go to Abids. It is one habit that consumes me on Sundays and it is something that leaves me uneasy if I do not indulge in it. I had initially decided not to go because of the rain. But when I met Uma at about half past eleven the rain had stopped. We decided to make a dash to Abids where there were more disappointments in store.

The regular shops were open for the Ramzan shoppers which meant that the second hand booksellers had to set up shop at other places. Some like the Best Book guys did not even put out any books. It is usually in the heaps of books that BB has that I find some good books like the two Spenser titles that we got the previous Sunday. There weren’t the usual sellers to be seen which took away some of the fun from the hunt. The seller who had Timeri N Murari’s ‘The Arrangements of Love’ that I had seen the other week, asked for a hundred and fifty rupees for it. I was not willing to pay that much so I walked away and later, I regretted not buying it. I came home empty handed.

After a hurried lunch I left for office feeling totally disappointed. It was a couple of hours work calling up district and finding out about the heavy rainfall. The news triclked in that four people died in the heavy rains. It was distressing to read the details. One person in Mahbubnagar was washed away in a stream. When I read the detailed report that said he had three small kids my gloom deepened. There are some things about the job that make you wish you were doing something else than read such things.

At half past five I finally left the office and went to Adarsh for tea. Of late the chota samosas at Adarsh seem to be too hot to taste. Someone in their kitchen seems to be too fond of green chillies and is adding them to the chota samosas in abundant quantities. The overspicy samosas did not go down well with the chai and added to my disappointment.

Anyway, on the way home the rain started again and for almost two hours there was no let up. I sat on the steps of a shop in Himayatnagar watching those in cars go by unmindful of the rain. There were entire families on motorbikes on the road getting wet but keen to go somewhere. By the time I got home it was half past seven. I had not bought a single book at Abids, I missed my nap and also missed watching 'Just Books' that is telecast at four on Sunday afternoon. More than that I missed out on some quality time with the family on a holiday. But that's the price sometimes we guys in the government have to pay.

The Sunday Haul- Two Spenser Books

2011-08-19T18:05:00.003+05:30

While hunting for books at Abids all alone has its own advantages, going with a friend with similar tastes for the book hunt brings its own surprises. Instead of two eyes there are four looking for familiar authors and hard to find titles. Last week it helped me land two books by an author I have been recently enamored of- Robert B Parker. Both books were spotted by the friend I had with me, faster than I could have done it.

Since a couple of months, Uma has been accompanying me to Abids on Sundays. Before we begin the hunt we sit at a café and drink chai while talking about books, writing and authors. It is a time of the week I look forward to because we talk for a long time about these matters. Last Sunday, we were sifting through the books heaped near the demolished movie complex when Uma fished out a brand new, hardcover copy of ‘Back Story’ by Robert B Parker. This from a heap of books selling for only thirty rupees! If I were to buy a new copy it would have set me back by at least a couple of hundred bucks. It was a very lucky find.

Hardly had I recovered from the excitement of getting the book, moments later Uma fished out another Spenser title by Robert B. Parker from the same heap. This was a paperback copy and appeared quite old. The title was ‘Ceremony’ and we got it for just twenty rupees. It was a bumper haul I felt since my collection of Spenser titles has jumped up to six till date. I am sure if I look carefully enough I will find more titles. Next Sunday onwards I plan to do just that.

Apart from these two titles I had also seen Timeri N. Murari’s ‘The Arrrangements of Love’ and Joe Eszterhas’ ‘American Rhapsody’ that I felt I should have picked since it was in the heap of books selling for only twenty rupees. I had also seen a good copy of Anish Trivedi’s ‘Call Me Dan’ but it was not within my range. Then there was the copy of William Dalrymple’s ‘In Xanadu’ that I did not buy for the same reason.

However, I also picked up the February 2011 issue of Vanity Fair that has an article on J.D. Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’ that I like immensely enough to read it every six months or so. There are other articles in it like the one about Huffington Post, Christopher Hitchens, Justin Bieber and so on that I am yet to read.

The haul of the two new Spenser titles pleased me no end and we decided to have a celebratory chai at Hotel Grand behind the GPO. When we went in, we were for a big surprise. Almost half of the main hall was taken up by a newly built staircase that led up to the first floor. The cement staircase not only marred the old time look of the Grand it also literally cast a shadow. The staircase took up an entire side of the hall towards a lane, and blocked out more than a couple of windows. Somehow I did not feel like visiting the place again. However, being a sucker for the chai in such Irani joints, I might, after all, go because the chai there is something unique.

Holiday Blues & Getting Drunk on Sambar

2011-08-16T19:03:00.000+05:30

The Perks

One of the perks of working for the government, one that I really like, is that there seem to be more holidays than we deserve. Last week there was one of those spells of continuous holidays lasting three days due to the weekend holidays- Second Saturday, Sunday and the Independence Day on Monday.

I would have enjoyed these three days of holidays more if I had company at home. The family wasn’t at home so I was all alone with nothing much to do. I cannot sit before the television for more than an hour. Of course, I had a lot of books to read and I managed to finish Robert B. Parker’s ‘Playmates’ in a couple of hours. Rest of the time I was on the road. Another perk (not quite a perk, actually) is getting past security checks. Normally I am not stopped on the roads by cops. But sometimes, if for some reason I get stopped, I’m let go after they take a look at me. How the cops know behind the full face helmet through which only my eyes are visible is a distinguished face is a mystery, but I’m waved through. Of course, there are times when the cops want to see the bike’s papers- RC, Licence, Insurance papers and so on. I show them nothing. I tell what I am (a government servant in case you did not know) and leave. Sometimes I have to take out my ID but that’s very rare.

On account of the security precautions for the Independence Day, there were cops checking all motorists on the roads. There are some cops who are cocky when performing such duties which makes them think they can talk flippantly with anyone. The cop who stopped me on Sunday was one such. He said,’ Licence, RC dikhao sarkaar.’ So he got to see I was actually the ‘sarkaar’ when I took out my Secretariat ID card. When I showed it to him he acted like I had shot him in the chest. In his confusion he almost gave me a salute when I drove away, jauntily.

Drunk on Sambar

During those three days when the family wasn’t at home there was plenty of food for the mind but nothing for the body which meant I had to eat out. I got a chance to check out two places I had been planning to visit since long.

On Saturday morning I had breakfast with a cop friend I had not met for a long time. We met at Chutneys at Begumpet. First we had idlis which were large, soft but rather thin which isn’t what idlis are supposed to be. But I couldn’t complain much because it was followed by a ’70 mm Dosa’ which was large enough to cover the table. Though the idlis and the 70 mm dosa weren’t anything to write about I cannot say the same about the sambar. It was simply out of the world, quite unlike anything I had tasted before. It was spicy and so good I actually drank some of it straight from the bowl. If felt really good. So I had another bowl. Next time I go to Chutneys I’ll go only for the sambar.

On Monday, my kid had to attend the Independence Day function at his school so I brought him home on Sunday night. Early on Monday after the function we went to a place called Nandini at Nallakunta for breakfast. We had dosas, special ones, which were quite okay. They came with a triangular cut on one side that was folded over the other half. The stuffing was on the flap that was cut and was spread out. Frankly, I haven’t seen it done anywhere and I wondered at the creativity. While the food wasn’t anything worth writing about, the service was too good. I asked for very hot coffee and it came piping hot. The waiter actually had a smile on his face while taking the order and also while serving us. One doesn’t see smiling waiters in small hotels anywhere in Hyderabad. Of course, the people at the big ones like Grand Kakatiya and Novotel are always smiling at you, sometimes for no reason.

Since I liked the Nandini waiter’s attitude treating us like we were special I left a huge tip. It is something I do when I come across people who appear to enjoy their work even if it is waiting on tables.

Back-from-the-Break Post

2011-08-12T08:53:00.003+05:30

Another New Hotel in Banjara Hills

I may have taken a break but there seems to be no break in this trend of hotels opening in the Hill area. Another hotel opened in Banjara Hills called the Al Faham. As per the write-up in Metro Plus by Serish Nanisetti written in his inimitable style, the place offers patrons a ‘Taste of Arabia’ with a lot of stuff like on the platter. It sounds like something that I shouldn't miss tasting at least once. So the next time I’m in Banjara Hills I hope I remember about Al Faham since I am rather keen to check out some of the dishes there.

A New Newspaper in Hyderabad

At the same time someone else brought out a new daily newspaper called ‘The Hans Times’ which makes it another of the umpteen newspapers coming out of Hyderabad. I bought a copy of the paper the other day to check it out. There isn't anything different in it that the others do not have. Since it has just been launched it takes some time to get everything right. It isn't a newspaper that I would want to read everyday though.

Books

I have been checking out the second hand bookstores in the city now and then which pays off in unexpected ways. I had thought it would be a tough and time consuming task getting together Robert B Parker’s series of Spenser novels but a visit to some of the bookstores here proved otherwise. I picked up ‘Hush Money’ that I read right away in two days flat and also 'Playmates' a couple of days later. I am confident I can get at least half of the Spenser titles at one go. Sometime during the end of the month I plan to take an inventory in all stores and do something very drastic to have as many Spenser titles as possible on my bookshleves.

The SundayHaul

On Sunday at Abids I picked up three books. The first find was Elmore Leonard’s ‘Bounty Hunters’ which is a Western and quite unlike anything I have read by him.

The second find was a book I once had and lost- Len Deighton’s ‘Yesterday’s Spy’ that I got for twenty bucks. I plan to stock up on a few of my favourite Len Deighton titles like ‘Only When I Larf’ and ‘Billion Dollar Brain’ since it has been quite a long time since I read his books. I am planning to reread some of his books especially those featuring Bernard Samson, one of my favorite Len Deighton charecters.

The third find was ‘How to Do the Times Crosswords’ which I got for only thirty rupees. But more about this book, another similar book, and my crossword addiction in a later post.

There were other books as well that piled up on the table. My friend Daniel presented me with Nicholas Sparks’ ‘A Bend in the Road’ that I plan to read quite soon. I have seen his books almost everywhere but haven’t yet read any title. ‘A Bend in the Road’ might be the first book I might read. Then I got another book, one that I was saving up for since a long time, as a present from Umashanker. He gave me a surprise by taking out Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘Living to Tell the Tale’ and handing it over to me at our usual haunt at an Irani cafe near home. It was a beautiful hardcover Borzoi First Edition and I am waiting for the moment I’d finish reading ‘the Bounty Hunters’ and Rohinton Mistry’s ‘Such a Long Journey’ before beginning ‘Living…Tale’

The First Haleem of the Season

It is that time of the season when nothing weights more on the Hyderabadi's mind than plans to eat haleem as many times (and as much) as possible. So being no different in other Hyderabadis in this respect I too had, for a change, only haleem on my mind which normally is occupied with thoughts of books and fountain pens. I wanted the first haleem of the season to be the absolute best so I decided to go to the nearest joint where I can get it.

I took my kid along to Paradise and had the first haleem of the season. The price of haleem per plate was a lot higher than the price of a litre of petrol. At eighty rupees per plate it beat the price of petrol by a clean nine rupees. Maybe you are wondering why I am comparing haleem with petrol. On a litre of petrol I can travel about fifty kilometres or four days of going to and from office. But if I can get a plate of good haleem then maybe I can go through the entire season without refuelling. But that is not what I intend to do- my plan is to taste haleem at least five more times at different places. Next in line is the haleem at Bahar.

That was what I've thought up during the break. The next post would be on Tuesday, as usual.

Milestone Post- 600 Posts in 4 Years of Blogging

2011-08-02T09:59:00.001+05:30

After my novel which I’ve stuck to since seven years, it is the blog I’ve been doing for such a long time, that is, four years. I am surprised that I have managed to blog for four long years without too many breaks. It gives me an opportunity to tell myself that I am quite a determined person. I hadn’t exactly started out thinking I would be a serious blogger. It was something that was born out of a whim. Everyone was doing it and I too wanted to do it no matter that I did not have any idea of what to blog about. But I got started and kept on going with the support of a lot of people who read it. Though they have said I have got better over time I do not believe it wholeheartedly. There is a lot I have to learn.

Anyway, it was on August 1, 2007 that I wrote my first post. Four years down the line the posts have grown to six hundred. About half of them are about what I love most- books. Some of them are about what I love, and also detest- Hyderabad. Some of them are random pieces about some of my travels, things that have happened to me, and so on. There is no unifying theme in the blog but surprisingly I had a very small following of some really wonderful people who encouraged me with their comments. I am truly grateful to them. If not for their comments that I was sometimes funny, that I was consistent, that I was prolific, I would have given up the blog long ago.

I intend to carry on for at least another year so I could say I have blogged for five years. But before starting the fifth year of blogging I want to celebrate four years of blogging. I had an unintentional celebration the other day about which I will write later. Another item on my list of celebrations is to take a short break from blogging. I will return to the blog on August 12.

A MIDWEEK HAUL, THE FIND ON SUNDAY AND A LAUNCH

2011-07-29T11:25:00.003+05:30

ANOTHER SPENSER FIND IN A MIDWEEK HAUL

I have a strange habit. I cannot resist stopping at a bookstore if I happen to be in the vicinity. Last Wednesday I was passing through Begumpet and there was the board of ‘Frankfurt’ bookstore beckoning to me. I got down telling myself that I’d only look at the books and not, surely not, pick up another book. I was almost about to congratulate myself for not picking up a single book in the half hour that I spent looking at the thousands of books when my glance fell on Robert B Parker’s ‘Hush Money’ which was a Spenser title.

Ever since I finished reading ‘Chance’ I had decided to read all the titles in the Spenser series. I had not even started reading ‘Hugger Mugger’ that I found on the other week before I saw ‘Hush Money’ on the shelf. Rather than spend sleepless nights regretting not buying it, I decided to pick up the book though I had to shell out sixty rupees for it. With ‘Hush Money’ now I have three Robert B Parker’s Spenser novels and there are almost thirty four more to find. I want to find his ‘Perchance to Dream’ which is a sequel to Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Big Sleep’ because I want to read it more than anything else by Robert B Parker.

SUNDAY HAUL

After two weeks I was returning to Abids and I was rather restless. The other week I had seen Ashis Nandy’s ‘The Tao of Cricket’ but had not bought it wondering why I, a non-cricketing guy, should read the book. But I had read a few of Nandy’s essays and was impressed by his arguments and insights about a lot of things that confound me. This probably influenced my decision to pick up ‘The Tao of Cricket’ which fortunately remained unsold till then. I thought Hari too might be interested in reading it so I bought it for forty rupees.

Sunday’s other find was the May 2010 issue of ‘Conde Nast Traveller’ magazine, the British edition, that I bought for thirty rupees. There were four more issues that I did not buy hoping to pick them up next week if I do not find anything else. The issue had The Hotlist 2010 of the best new hotels in the world, lengthy pieces on Shanghai, the Amalfi Coast, Menorca and such places where I can never hope to go as long as I continue in this job. There was a small piece by Jan Morris on London and also came to know of her latest book- ‘Contact!’ I read only one article, Harriet O’ Brien’s ‘Friends in High Places’ which made me wonder if Nepal should be the next place I should visit.

LAUNCH OF 'RIVER OF SMOKE' AT HYDERABAD
I got to know the news about the launch of Amitav Ghosh’s ‘River of Smoke’ by the author only a day before the event. Luckily I was free on Tuesday evening and went for the event that took place in a beautiful ballroom at the Park that had the dimensions of an airport hangar. There was the crowd made up of the reading elite of Hyderabad among which was a top cop who I personally knew. It was the almost the same crowd that had thronged Grand Kakatiya for the launch of ‘Sea of Poppies’ three years ago. Though I did not buy a copy of ‘River of Smoke’ I bought a copy of ‘Dancing in Cambodia’ that I thought I would get signed. But I had to leave right after the reading and the interaction with Jyotirmaya Sharma.

WHAT’S NEW IN HYDERABAD

2011-07-26T12:31:00.000+05:30

NEW CHIMPANZEE FOR HYDERABAD- ONE AMONG MANY

Those of you wondering what’s new in the Hyderabad zoo, here’s news for you. Last week the latest addition to the zoo in Hyderabad was a female chimp. It seems there were two chimpanzees in a mini-zoo at Amby Valley at Pune. After one of them died the other was feeling lonely and so Sahara India decided to gift it to Hyderabad, of all the places.

So now we have another chimpanzee in our midst as if there aren’t enough already crowding the roads of Hyderabad. But this is one unlucky chimp I feel. Imagine, like it isn’t enough misfortune already, losing one’s companion and on top of it, being sent to a place like Hyderabad,

I hope the chimpanzee feels at home in Hyderabad and doesn’t get ideas to get a driving licence.

AUDI RS5 COUPE LAUNCHED

I hear and read about Porsches, BMWs, Jaguars and other expensive car models being launched in the city but have not actually spotted any till date. Maybe because those fancy cars, quite naturally, are bought by the money bags in Jubilee Hills crowd who do not seem to drive these cars anywhere in those cars other than on the roads of Jubilee Hills.

Last week another sports car, the Audi RS 5 Couple was launched in the city. I read that the car costs about Rs 78 lakhs. And wasn’t surprised that two of them were already sold to two guys who, I am willing to bet, are residents of Jubilee Hills. I also read in the same newsitem that there are two other guys in Hyderabad who are going about in Audi cars worth more than two crores each

GETTING READY FOR THE HALEEM SEASON

There’s a sense of expectancy in the air and it is with a spring in the step that the Hyderabadi is going around these days. He is just waiting for the Ramzan season to begin to hog on Haleem. The holy month of Ramzan is barely a week away and already preparations are on at several Irani joints. Hearths are being built and banners are being tied at the joints offering the dish. I am not able to pass these places without drooling.
Another week and one can find Hyderabadis of all ages, groups, religions hogging on haleem at Irani joints in all corners of the city every evening for a month or so. Quite an irony, while the Muslim brethren fast, others seem to eat more.

LAUNCH OF ‘RIVER OF SMOKE’ IN HYDERABAD

Amitav Ghosh will be launching ‘River of Smoke’ today evening at The Park. I plan to be present at the event and maybe write about it in the next post.

THE HAUL

2011-07-22T11:43:00.002+05:30

There aren’t many things that keep me away from browsing for books at Abids on Sundays. One of them is a fever and the other, not surprisingly, is the family. This Sunday it wasn’t a fever that kept me away from Abids but the family. To be precise, they wanted to go on a trip somewhere far from Hyderabad and that too on a Sunday. Since it had been quite a long time that I had been out of the city I agreed reluctantly and off we went to Vemulawada which is that the next post might be about.

Robert B Parker is one heck of a crime writer. I wouldn’t have known it sooner had I not packed his ‘Chance’ for the trip to Vemulawada on Sunday. I hadn’t planned to read it right away after I had picked up the book only last month. But now I am glad I did not let it remain on the shelf for ages and took it out to read last Sunday. It was so riveting that I couldn’t put it down. Normally while on trips I wouldn’t do anything other than staring out through the window at the scenery passing by but on this trip I read. All through the four hour journey to Vemulawada and again on the return trip to Hyderabad I sat reading the fantastic book. I felt like I was reading one of Elmore Leonard’s books with crackling dialogue and fast action.

After I finished reading ‘Chance’ I wanted to check out his other books in the Spenser series. I read that Robert B Parker had written in all thirty seven novels featuring Spenser, the Private Investigator. Sometime back at a bookstore I had spotted a Spenser book so no sooner had I landed at Hyderabad the first thing I did the next day was to hare off to the bookstore. I found, not one but three Spenser books- ‘The Widening Gyre,’ ‘Hugger Mugger’ and ‘Pot Shot.’ Of these, Hugger Mugger was the least priced so I picked it up though I wanted to buy all three. However eager I am I do not plan to read it right away but will allow at least a week to pass by before I take out the book and read it.

I am terribly pleased by my mongrel tastes in books because I have managed to find another great crime writer who many put in the same league as Raymond Chandler and others. Here’s what the blurbs on ‘Hugger Mugger’ say :

‘A winner… the famous dialogue is polished to a high shine…terrific’- Kirkus Reviews

‘His one-liners are so sharp you could slice salami with them. Bottomline: in the winners circle’- People

‘The snappy back-and-forth dialogue and rimshot wisecracks are here in abundance’- Chicago Tribune

Now the visits to Abids and second hand bookstore will acquire a sharper suspense, to see if I can find any Robert B Parker title featuring Spenser

What's New in Hyderabad?

2011-07-19T13:01:00.002+05:30

Fortune Katriya Turns Eight
Even though I quit advertising long back, as a former adman I still look at advertisements and hoardings like my life depended on it. That was how I came to know last week that Fortune Katriya hotel had completed eight years of existence. I had almost forgotten the hotel existed. There are reasons for this though one being, out of sight, out of mind. Hotel FK, if you’ve been there (I haven’t been), is located somewhere inside a lane in the Somajiguda area. It appears to me like they’ve built it in such a manner that only those who really want to stay/eat at the hotel can look at it. Anyway, I am surprised eight years have passed without me stepping into it or even looking at it.

However, according to the hoarding, Fortune Katriya, as part of its eighth anniversary celebrations, has some special offers which go something like this: Max Wine at Rs 88, Max Wine & Dine at Rs 888, and Max Luxury at Rs 8888. Nothing’s suggested on the hoarding about how long this offer lasts and if one is inclined to check it out, I’d suggest searching for the hotel first.

Two More 'Eat and Run' places in Musheerabad
While on the subject of hotels I am getting the impression though not on the scale of Jubilee Hills, Musheerabad too is witnessing a kind of mushrooming of eating joints. Barely a month has passed after Grand Crown opened than two (yes, two) new eating joints are making an appearance in my neighbourhood. One is ‘Hotel Sandhya’ which is smaller than the lobby of some hotels I’ve been so and gives the impression that it isn’t some kind of a place where you spend hours over your food. You just eat and run. The other joint, more of a Irani, is in the cellar of a building almost opposite Hotel Sandhya across the road. A banner informed that chai and a few snacks are what the place offers.

Hyderabad Gets an Afternoon Newspaper
Hyderabad now has a new afternoon English newspaper called ‘Post Noon’ that is described as Hyderabad’s ‘First Compact Afternoon Newspaper’ of ‘Scribble Media’ from the Jagati Publications stable. On Thursday I saw several copies of the tabloid size paper at the newsstands and bought a copy. It was the launch issue so it is better to give it time before it develops a style. It is too early to say how the paper is though in appearance it is quite impressive. I wanted to check out the Sunday issue but couldn’t because I was out of town the whole day. But I am glad there’s another paper to read.

Er…
Sometime back in a recent post I’ve sort of jumped the gun about the reopening of ‘MR Books’ store at Abids. It seems they just opened the shutters on the day I happened to see it and got the impression that it was reopening. I was disappointed to learn that the store remains closed and not very likely to reopen in the near future. Sad.

The Sunday Haul

2011-07-15T14:48:00.001+05:30

Unlike most people I do not wake up on Sundays feeling good all over and get out of bed feeling gung ho about everything. There are Sundays when I wake up feeling terribly anxious almost like the world is coming to an end. This feeling usually manifests on those Sundays that follows the previous Sunday when I have failed to pick up certain books at the book bazaar at Abids. Though I feel a low grade anxiety all week it peaks on Sunday morning, the hour before I leave for Abids. Last Sunday was one such Sunday.

Last Sunday I had missed buying ‘Meditations’ of Marcus Aurelius and also Rohinton Mistry’s ‘Such a Long Journey’ apart from other titles. I did not buy them because of various reasons, one of which was money. I had picked up too many books so I decided to forego these titles. But the moment I had reached home the regret began to gnaw at me and I almost went back again to pick them up. Somehow I resisted the urge with the result that the whole week I had an agonising time waiting for Sunday and also hoping it wouldn’t rain. I set out with a prayer hoping no one had picked up the books I had left behind

It did not rain last Sunday when I raced out of the house. At Chikkadpally I was relieved to find the copy of Rohinton Mistry’s ‘Such a Long Journey’ exactly where it was. I picked it up for fifty rupees only. I had planed to start reading books by the older lot of Indian writers but never quite got around to doing it. It would be a good start to begin with Rohinton Mistry’s ‘Such a Long Journey’ and in fact, I have already started the book and found it to be very interesting. More about it in another post.

Even after finding ‘Such a Long Journey’ my anxiety hadn’t entirely abated because there was ‘Meditations’ to pick up at Abids. Luckily, this too was exactly where I had last seen it. I had to shell out a hundred and twenty rupees which appears too much but when compared to all the wisdom in the book it is peanuts. Besides, it was a damn good copy without a single blemish. I was glad I found the book.

Incidentally, with ‘Meditations’ now I have three books by three wise men of yore, on negotiating life’s treacherous turns and challenges sensibly and with equanimity and courage. I have Baltasar Gracian’s ‘The Art of Worldly Wisdom’ and also Epictetus’ ‘The Art of Living’ that I try to read almost every day. There are other people like Seneca, etc whose works I haven’t yet sampled. But since now a small collection is beginning to grow, I will look out for similar books and build my collection and hopefully, also stock up on some common sense that I sorely lack.

Another good find was Samit Basu’s ‘The Simoqin Prophecies’ that is the first of the ‘Gameworld Trilogy.’ I am not very interested in this genre but after reading his column in this month’s ‘Literary Review’ in The Hindu I wanted to try out one of his books.

But the luckiest find of the day was by Uma who accompanied me to Abids. He picked up a decent copy of Haruki Murakami’s ‘Kafka on the Shore’ for only fifty rupees. I have two copies of the book but haven’t yet read it with the intention of reading all such good books when I find some quiet time.

New Food Joints in the City of the Dumb

2011-07-12T12:59:00.001+05:30

MORE FOOD JOINTS
This is one new restaurant in Jubilee Hills I am not going ever to crib about mainly for two reasons. The first reason is that this joint called ‘Organika,’ as the name suggests, serves organic stuff only. I am all for the organic life though it is not always possible. I read sometime last week that ‘Organika’ opened its doors a couple of weeks ago in Jubilee Hills ( I do not know where exactly in JH) offering among other things something called ‘Bubble Tea’ which is definitely something I’d like to check out if I find the time and of course, if I manage to locate in the labyrinthine roads of Jubilee Hills and provided it is still around by the time I eventually find it.

The second reason why I don’t want to crib about the opening of this new restaurant in JH is (surprise, surprise,) that a hotel opened in my own neighbourhood. A little more than a week ago a place called ‘Golden Crown Restaurant and Dum Ka Biryani’ opened on the main road. It isn’t exactly a new one since there already existed a rundown Irani joint that has now made way for Golden Crown. The name certainly evokes something of the Hyderabadi suddenness of making things clear right away. Anyway, I am happy to report that Crown is making good business since I always find it crowded with people. There’s another restaurant just across the road so I am surprised at the crowds. Maybe the food is good which means I have to check it out, which being in the neighbourhood, I feel is my bounden duty.

The Dumb Hyderabadi
There’s a lengthy post that I am contemplating doing sometime soon on how the Hyderabadis are total suckers. There have been countless instances of people being cheated by what is called the ‘attention diversion gang’ but we do not seem to have learnt our lessons. The gang members stalk people carrying large amounts of cash near banks and such places, tell the person they’ve dropped money on the road and while the greedy guy bends down to pick up the change, the gang makes off with the actual loot. It has happened so many times that one would think that one would have learnt to be more careful. But no, we Hyderabadis seem to think that each of us have to go through the experience individually before becoming alert. About a week ago I read in the papers about the security guards (!) of a cash van being duped by the gang who made off with nearly twenty lakhs. Imagine losing twenty lakhs for some loose change on the road. That is how dumb we Hyderabadis are.

THE SUNDAY HAUL & MUSINGS ON LITERARY REVIEW

2011-07-07T17:58:00.002+05:30

When it comes to books my normally strong will crumbles like the proverbial cookie. Since a long time I’ve been promising myself that I would not pick up any more books at Abids on Sundays. But so far I haven’t been successful in keeping this promise. Every week I see some book or the other at Abids and tell myself ‘just this book/s this one time and no more’ and end up picking books like I am planning to open a library. This Sunday too it was no different. I bought a couple of books again. However I am glad because I picked up only three books though I had seen half a dozen books that I felt I should have picked up. There was Rakshanda Jalil’s translation of Saadat Hasan Manto’s stories, Jonathan Stroud’s ‘The Amulet of Samarkand’, Rohinton Mistry’s ‘Such a Long Journey,’ ‘Meditations’ by Marcus Aurelius that I held back reluctantly from buying. But I did pick up three books, two of them travelogues, by the way and the third book, a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.

The first travelogue that I found was Ian Frazier’s ‘Great Plains’ and the second travelogue was ‘Danziger’s Travels’ by Nick Danziger. I found these two in a new heap of books selling for twenty bucks only. I guess I got them quite cheap because Ian Frazier’s ‘Great Plains’ is a Penguin and a hardcover at that. ‘Danziger’s Travels’ was also special because it was signed by Nick Danziger himself.

The third find was Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go,’ a novel that I got for fifty rupees, a bit steep but I guess worth it. I’ve never read anything by Ishiguro though I’ve been looking for his acclaimed title ‘Remains of the Day.’ I read Pico Iyer analyse it in ‘Tropical Classical’ and since then I’ve been looking for Kazuo Ishiguro’s books. Someday I hope to find his ‘Remains of the Day.’

The Literary Review
This month’s Literary Review supplement in The Hindu produced more than the usual joy that I experience while reading it. Whether it was the wonderful interview by Ziya Us Salam on Amitav Ghosh or whether it was the anticipation of reading ‘River of Smoke’ I don’t know. Zia Us Salam’s interview was not exactly a ‘Q&A’ session but more like a discussion that revealed a lot about Ghosh and his writing in an insightful manner. Somehow it made me pleased that we have someone in our midst who writes the sort of books that not only sell well but are also considered near classics. What rang true in it was what Ghosh said about writing: Writing is a lonely process, it is a solitary pursuit, requires solitude

Then there was Samit Basu’s amusing piece about his visit to Bhutan for ‘Mountain Echoes’ the Indo-Bhutanese Literary Festival. It was a funny piece unlike the articles on such events one usually gets to read in other papers and magazines. Here was someone who found different things at the Bhutan apart from literature.

Etc.,
The other day I was browsing the net and saw on NDTV Profit channel that ‘Just Books’ was being telecast on 4 pm on Sundays and 6 pm on Saturdays. Last Sunday I watched it at four pm only to find a special episode which had Sunil Sethi talking with Amitav Ghosh. There’s going to be a lot of Ghosh in the coming days I guess. . ‘River of Smoke’ too has generated a lot of buzz already but I will wait some more time. But what I am waiting is for the Hyderabad launch, if it is going to happen.

While browsing the net I came across the interesting piece of information that Amitav Ghosh writes with a Mont Blanc. Ah, at last there’s something in common.

The Six Month Haul and Reading

2011-07-04T16:42:00.001+05:30

These are the titles I picked up at Abids this year from the first of January to the last day of June. The six month haul adds up to forty three books. Of these, I’ve read only eight and the remaining twelve books are those I bought at various times. I’ve listed them below. As can be seen I haven’t read even half the number of books I’ve bought in the same period which is something I plan to reverse in the second half of the year.

THE SIX MONTH HAUL OF 2011

January

1. ‘Beyond the Mexique Bay’ by Aldous Huxley
2. ‘The Autograph Man’ by Zadie Smith-
3. ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Dragon Tattoo’ by Stieg Larsson
4. ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ by Joan Didion
5. ‘At Home With Books’-

February

1. ‘Lucky Man’ by Michael J. Fox
2. ‘The Almost Moon’ by Alice Sebold
3. ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ by Mohammed Hanif
4. ‘If It Is Sweet’ by Mridula Koshy
5. ‘The Liveliest Art’ by Arthur Knight
6. ‘Shining Through’ by Susan Isaacs
7. ‘Newspaper Days’ by Theodore Drieser
8. ‘Diamond Dust’ by Anita Desai

March
1. ‘The Finkler Question’ by Howard Jacobson
2. ‘Wonderland’ by Joyce Carol Oates-
3. ‘The Elephant Vanishes’ by Haruki Murakami
4. ‘This Boy’s Life’ by Tobias Wolff
5. ‘Life is Elsewhere’ by Milan Kundera
6. ‘Stephen Fry in America’ by Stephen Fry

April
1. ‘Get Carter’ Screenplay by Mark Hodges-
2. ‘The Arrangement’ by Elia Kazan-
3. ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ by Che Guevara
4. ‘The Continental Op’ by Dashiell Hammett
5. ‘Encore Provence’ by Peter Mayle
6. ‘Dave Barry’s Guide to Guys’ by Dave Barry
7. ‘Better- A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance’ byAtul Gawande
8. ‘After Dark’ by Haruki Murakami

May
1. ‘The Man in My Basement’ by Walter Mosley
2. ‘All the Pretty Horses’ by Cormac McCarthy
3. ‘Complications’ by Atul Gawande
4. ‘A House for Mr Biswas’ by V.S. Naipaul
5. ‘The Leopard’ by Jo Nesbo
6. ‘Perdido Station Street’ by China Mieville
7. ‘Beyond the Blue Mountains’ by Penelope Lively
8. ‘Lunatic in My Head’ by Anjum Hasan

June
1. ‘Night Train to Lisbon’ by Pascal Mercier,
2. ‘Freaky Deaky’ by Elmore Leonard
3. ‘Freedom Song’ by Amit Chaudhri
4. ‘Arabia’ by Jonathan Raban
5. ‘Out of Sight’ by Elmore Leonard
6. ‘The Cobra’s Heart’ by Ryszard Kapuscinski
7. ‘Worth Dying For’ by Lee Child
8. ‘Chance’ by Robert B Parker

BOOKS I READ IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2011
1. ‘Up in Honey’s Room’ by Elmore Leonard
2. ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ by Mohammed Hanif
3. ‘Utz’ by Bruce Chatwin
4. ‘If It Is Sweet’ by Mridula Koshy
5. ‘Global Soul’ by Pico Iyer
6. ‘Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7. ‘Write Away’ by Elizabeth George
8. ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ by Mohsin Hamid
9. ‘White Album’ by Joan Dision
10. ‘Istanbul’ by Orhan Pamuk
11. ‘Freaky Deaky’ by Elmore Loenard (nth reading)
12. ‘Complications’ by Atul Gawande
13. ‘Counsel of Strangers’ by Gouri Dange
14. ‘Out of Sight’ by Elmore Leonard
15. ‘Eats Shoots and Leaves’ by Lynne Truss
16. ‘Playing With Fire’ by Gordon Ramsay
17. ‘The Cobra’s Heart’ by Ryszard Kapuscinski
18. ‘One L’ by Scott Turow
19. ‘Diamond Dust’ by Anita Desai
20. ‘Moth Smoke’ by Mohsin Hamid

Next Post on Friday- The Sunday Haul

The Sunday Haul and Other Stuff

2011-07-01T15:00:00.000+05:30

Most Sunday mornings I set out for Abids wondering what I’d return with. As always I hope to find a good book but at the back of my mind also lurks a faint hope that I’d not find anything worth adding to my already burgeoning collection. Last Sunday, unlike other Sundays, I set out knowing beforehand what I’d come back with.

The Sunday before while picking up Lee Child’s ‘Worth Dying For’ I had seen a title in the ‘Spenser’ series by Robert B Parker but I did not buy it. I had hoped no one would buy it and this Sunday I was surprised to find the book exactly at the same place on the shelf. No one bought the book so I gladly picked it up though I had to pay for sixty rupees for it. With ‘Chance’ by Robert B Parker in the haul my collection of crime fiction has gone up by three new titles after Stieg Larrson’s ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ that I found sometime last year but haven’t yet found the time read.

In last Friday’s ‘Life’ supplement in ‘Business Line’ daily I came across an interesting column by TCA Srinivasa Raghavan called ‘Running Out of Print’ which was on bookstores, reading and books. The writer mentioned that he had read two of Manohar Shyam Joshi’s Hindi novels – ‘Raag Darbari’ and ‘Mukhya Mantri.’ But ‘Raag Darbari’ was written by Srilal Shukla, I know because I have the English translation with me. I hope someone tells TCA Srinivasa Raghavan about that mistake. Incidentally, I found ‘Raag Darbari’ one of the most hilarious and funniest books I’ve ever read. I haven’t read the original in Hindi which I am sure is better than the English translation that I read, though the translated version too is quite funny. Someday I plan to read the original version in Hindi. It is one of my long terms plans to read a couple of classics of Telugu and Hindi literature in their original language.

Waiting for Literary ReviewThere’s only a couple of days’ more for next Sunday, which being the first Sunday of the month brings with it ‘The Literary Review’ inside the folds of ‘The Hindu.’ So I wait eagerly for next Sunday morning when I would be able to read the well written reviews of the latest books, articles on writing, on classics and on forgotten books. It is something I read from top to bottom, beginning to end quite a number of times during the month until it is time for the next issue of Literary Review.

MR Books to Reopen at Abids
A couple of years ago I was posted in Hyderabad at our Headquarters which wasn’t exactly a dream posting. Of the very few things I liked about the posting was that the office was just a short walk away from Bombay Bakery and Restaurant and a second hand bookstore. I had tea at the former and afterwards browsed at the latter on afternoons when there wasn’t much work. There wasn’t much work to begin with but that is another story. MR Books is another top second hand bookseller in Hyderabad with a couple of branches in the city. The branch at Begumpet is a swank one and one that I frequent often.

At Abids, their branch was on the first floor of a small building opposite Grammar School on the busy Abids main road. It was a place I loved to drop in and browse for about an hour, sometimes picking up a great find. One of the best finds there was the Salman Rushdie- Elizabeth West edited book ‘The Vintage Book of Indian Writing’ that I got for two hundred bucks and another find was ‘Best Writing on Writing’ that also I got quite cheap. Quite suddenly the store shut down and one fine day I saw the board of ‘Bowl of China’ displayed. For those who do not know ‘Bowl of China’ is the unsuccessful twin of Hyderabad House that dot the city. Wherever there is an outlet of ‘Hyderabad House’ one can find ‘Bowl of China’ just beside it. When I saw MR had shut down I was disappointed but hoped they would reopen the store at some other place which is what the MR guys are good at. But that did not happen until last week.

Last week while passing through Abids, I saw that the place where MR once stood was again being repainted in the familiar yellow and green colors. The board of ‘Bowl of China’ was gone perhaps for good because the place never really opened. In another week I guess MR Books will reopen at Abids. Watch this space for more news.

Coffee in an Irani café versus Chai in an Udupi hotel

2011-06-29T16:05:00.000+05:30

There are certain things no true blue Hyderabadi would even dream of doing much less think about actually doing them. One such thing happens to be ordering coffee in an Irani café. When one is in an Irani cafe one drinks only chai. Even if chai is not available (which is quite impossible, by the way) no one even accidentally thinks of ordering coffee in an Iran café if he knows where his mind is at. Even the dumbest Hyderabadi doesn’t get such an idea. So the moment anyone does such a thing, he is revealed as someone not from Hyderabad.

Similarly, it is at one’s own peril that one orders chai in an Udupi hotel. Those Udupi guys can’t make chai even if their life depended on it. However, they can make wonderful coffee which is the sole reason why I sometimes step into Udupi hotels notwithstanding the loony waiters one finds there. They stand there, nose up in the air, like you’ve just stepped out of a garbage truck even if you are wearing your best clothes. In my forty eight years of life I’ve yet to come across a smiling waiter in an Udupi hotel.

Anyway, I like to think that the Irani hotel chaps make coffee better than the Udupi guys can make chai because one can at least drink half a cup of the Irani coffee without puking whereas the chai in Udupi joints is something I cannot even bear to look at. Once, in an experimental mood, I made the grave mistake of ordering chai in an Udupi hotel. When the waiter repeated ‘Chai?’ and gave me a peculiar look like I was the first guy in the hoary history of the hotel to have ordered Chai I knew I was in for something. Needless to say it tasted like they have made chai for the first time in their lives. It was the first time in my life that I ever took an oath. That day onwards I vowed never, never to order chai in an Udupi hotel even if it were the my last drink on this earth.

The other day I was at Adarsh café enjoying a couple of chota samosas and chai when two guys walked in and settled down at my table. When one of them looked around for the waiter I knew the guy wasn’t a Hyderabadi. In Irani cafes one dimply doesn’t look or call for the waiter. One simply waits until the waiter spots you and slowly sort of drifts in the general direction of your table.

Then when the jumpy guy asked the waiter, ‘What’s available?’ my hunch that he wasn’t a Hyderabadi was proved right. I realized they were from some place where they don’t even know what an Iran café is otherwise they wouldn’t have walked into the hotel especially after the waiter’s response to their query. ‘Look in that,’ the waiter said, pointing to the glass shelves display the usual items, ‘check there and call me when you’ve decided.’ He then walked away, hands in his pockets, jingling the change.

Which brings us to another Hyderabadi thing. There’s a certain style of placing your order in an Irani cafe that separates the Hyderabadis and the rest of the world. To place an order in an Irani café you should first know your nan katai from your Osmania and your dil pasand from dil kush. Unlike in an Udupi where you ask the waiter what’s on the menu and wait until he stops listing out the 642 items and then takes your order, in an Irani you just tell the waiter what you want, with just your fingers and wait.

But the question remains- if the Irani cafe guys cannot make coffee and the Udupi hotel chaps cannot make good chai, why do they put it on the menu? That, my friends, is something that happens only in Hyderabad and like all things Hyderabadi, it is something that has no simple explanation.

WHAT’S NEW IN HYDERABAD?

2011-06-27T19:21:00.001+05:30

Some More Glitter
Close on the heels of the Hitex Gold and Jewellery Gold Expo that ended sometime last week comes the news of yet another glitter event. I read that the fourth edition of the Hyderabad Jewellery, Pearls and Gem Fair will be beginning from the ninth of July. However, unlike the previous event which was for the general public this Fair is B2B, that is, only for those in the trade. Only those carrying Establishment Licence, Photo ID proof and visiting cards will be let in. Given the stuff that’s on show they might have as well asked them to come in armoured cars and pack a gun.

Target: Manholes
Well, it’s taken the traffic cops to point out that manhole covers on the city’s roads are either above or below the road surface. My engineering colleagues in the GHMC haven’t noticed this perhaps but now they are making arrangements to bring these manhole covers to the level of the road. It was mentioned that about 450 manhole covers are in this manner. I’m willing to bet that there are more than 450 manholes in Musheerabad alone. Anyway, it is good to learn that someone has at last decided to do something about them..

Another Branch of Tamasha Store
Then there was the ad I saw on television the other day about the opening of a branch of another Tamasha store. Generally, in Hyderabad, there are places or localities in the city, where big stores must have a branch at any cost. One will find branches of virtually every big name in Ameerpet, Kukatpally, Dilshuknagar, Patny. Of late, Hitech City has joined this list like there isn’t enough there already. So yesterday I saw on the television that Chandana Brothers is opening its branch at Hitech City on Sunday.

Mr and Miss Corporate
Like there aren’t events happening in Hyderabad, especially beauty pageants and fashion parades, ‘Marve Entertainments’ has come up with the bright idea of organising a Corporate Fashion Contest called ‘Mr and Miss Corporate,’ a fashion and modelling’ event exclusively for corporates ,especially in the IT segment. So they plan to make this a two part event with the finals sometime in August. By this they plan to give the employees in the corporate to display their fashion and modelling talent. There is no dearth of such stylish folks in the IT industry. I hope someday someone will get a similar idea for those in the government!

Biryani and Kebab Festival

At the time of this writing this event must have begun since events like these are rare. By rare, I mean for rare the man on the road, not for the high and mighty (not to mention, rich) for whom there is always some food festival or the other going on one or the other big hotels. So, this place called Gazebo International is organising a week long ‘biryani and kebab festival’ which is guaranteed to be a hit given the Hyderabadi’s fascination for biryani. But I am still trying to find out where the heck Gazebo International is.

Next Post on Wednesday

THE MIDWEEK AND SUNDAY HAUL

2011-06-24T15:00:00.001+05:30

A Midweek HaulLast Friday when I dropped in at Crossword in the City Center Mall at Banjara Hill for a book launch I spotted a book that I felt I had to buy. It was Ryszard Kapuscinski’s ‘The Cobra’s Heart’ that was incongruously placed among self help books. ‘The Cobra’s Heart’ is an extract from ‘The Shadow of the Sun’ which anyway I may not find so I planned to buy it before I began to have second thoughts. My heart wouldn’t quite calm down until I bought ‘The Cobra’s Heart’ for a hundred and sixty five rupees. It was No 20 on the Penguin Great Journeys list at the back of the book which meant there are nineteen other books I have to buy.

The Find on SundayRecently I read somewhere that fans of a character called ‘Jack Reacher’ in Lee Child’s books were disappointed that Tom Cruise was playing the role. It got me wondering who Lee Child was and why I had never heard of him or his books though it was apparent he was a bestselling crime fiction author. The name sort of stuck in the mind. On Sunday I was walking around at Abids trying not to buy anything when my eyes fell on the name ‘Lee Child’ on the cover of a book. The book was Lee Child’s ‘Worth Dying For’ the latest in the Jack Reacher series it seems but the price of a hundred bucks put me off. Plus there was this self-imposed ban on buying books that I have not been serious about since the past couple of weeks. Anyway, I walked away only to return but after finishing going around and ended up buying ‘Worth Dying For’ for a hundred rupees.

Etc., I first spotted ‘The River of Smoke’ while I was browsing in a second hand bookstore at Punjagutta earlier in the week. ‘The River of Smoke’ is the second book in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy. Like ‘Sea of Poppies’ ‘The River of Smoke’ too seems to be quite a long book going by its size though I couldn’t tell how many pages it ran to since it was encased in plastic. I had read somewhere that the book would be launched in June so I was not very surprised to see it. But I was sure surprised to find it in a second hand bookstore.

At Crossword on Friday when I went for the book launch, I found several copies of ‘The River of Smoke’ in a special display. I’ll wait until Amitav Ghosh comes to Hyderabad for the launch which I hope he does. But I may have to wait for a couple of months before that happens. Now that the book is out, it is Amitav Ghosh everywhere. There was a lengthy interview in the Deccan Chronicle on Sunday that I read at Adarsh after my Necklace Road routine. The Crest edition of Times of India too carried a write up on Amitav Ghosh and ‘The River of Smoke.’ I just managed to catch the final moments of Sunil Sethi’s interview with Amitav Ghosh on ‘Just Books’ on Saturday evening. I had hoped it would be repeated on Sunday night but unfortunately it wasn’t.

Spotting a Possible BestsellerOn Friday, apart from Kapuscinski’s ‘The Cobra’s Heart’ I saw another book that I felt could be a good read. The book was ‘Ours are the Streets’ by Sunjoy Sahota which, from what I read of the first few paragraphs, sounds like a very good book. There’s a certain edginess to the writing that appealed to me but not enough to make me buy the book right away. The price of the book also made me think of waiting until I read the reviews of the book that I was sure to come across sooner or later in the papers and magazines.

On Sunday at Abids right next to ‘Worth Dying For’ I saw a book by another writer I’ve recently read about a lot- Robert B Parker. It was of the ‘Spenser’ series though I am not able to recollect the title. I might buy it if it is still available next Sunday. Apart from this book there are a lot of books other I have seen of late that I’m tempted to buy though some of them are books that I have already with me. I saw another good copy of Pico Iyer’s ‘Video Night in Kathmandu,’ ‘Be Cool’ by Elmore Leonard, and Pankaj Mishra’s ‘Butter Chicken in Ludhiana.’ I plan to buy ‘Butter Chicken in Ludhiana’ since I haven’t read it yet though it was published ages ago. That’s because I haven’t come across a second hand copy till now.

Morning Calm & Grim Thoughts on Father’s Day

2011-06-22T17:00:00.001+05:30

The need for solitude amidst nature burns inside all the time but due to work and other distractions it is not always possible. I’ve made it a habit to drop in at Necklace Road early in the mornings one Sunday a month to get some much needed solitude and try calm down. It had been nearly a month and half since I was last at Necklace Road. In the monsoon reason one is not sure of watching the sunrise what with the skies being covered with clouds. Last Sunday surprisingly a clear sky welcomed me when I reached Necklace Road. The other surprise was that there wasn’t a single soul around for quite a long time, at least not until the sun began to come over the horizon. Usually, there are morning walkers and exercisers crowding the place but this Sunday I was alone. I had only the chirping and cooing birds for company. A lone, dark duck waded into the frame just when I clicked the rising sun with my digital camera as if to make the picture complete.

I sat for over three quarters of an hour at the trying to get over a minor heartache and found some of the tumult in my heart began to recede. I had been overlooked for a trip to Chennai to attend a four day training session. Earlier in the month I was overlooked in favour of someone else for a five training session at Pune. It had been so long since I had been out of Hyderabad that I was dying to get out somewhere. However when the opportunity came I was passed over. It rankled in my heart and left me uncharacteristically aloof at work.

After sitting at the lakeside alone watching the sun I was able to get over the disappointment completely. I also figured out what to do with my novel that I am revising probably for the hundredth time. I resolved to finish it by the end of July at any cost and with that decision I left for the second phase of the Necklace Road routine- the paper reading session at Adarsh Café.

I bought the Sunday papers and settled down at one of the tables in the Irani with the intention of spending a long time sipping chai and reading the two newspapers. When I opened them I realized it was Father’s Day. I read the accounts of many celebrities recounting how their fathers helped them in life. I am a father myself now but even after twenty three years I still cannot get over my father’s death.

My mother used to say, and still says, that I am the unluckiest member of the family. I did not know how unlucky I was until that fateful day in August 1988. I was the only one in my family who did not get to take a last look at my father. That day by some curious coincidence two of my brothers were in Delhi and I was in a train on my way to Delhi. When I reached Delhi in the morning when my closest friend came to the railway station to receive me I was a bit surprised. He gave me the news that my father was seriously ill. I was so naïve and did not realize he was already dead. My two brothers had already left Delhi the previous day. I have no idea how I got to the small town where my father was born and where his body was taken for the last rites. By the time I reached it was all over. I was too late. All I got to see were the dying embers on the funeral pyre.

I still don’t understand what made my father persuade me to take the test at Delhi when I was totally against it. He let us all do our own thing and did not bother much about what we did. But that day he actually came along to the railway station to see me off. He never dropped any of us at school or come to pick us up. He did not accompany us on the first day of college or on graduation day. So it was a big mystery why he did what he did. But why I agreed to go was one decision I cannot come to terms with. I’m almost every day tormented by the thought- what if I had said no and refused to make the trip to Delhi?

What's New in Hyderabad?

2011-06-20T16:00:00.001+05:30

Another Hotel Crops Up and Another Waits To
To begin with a topic now become too frequent on this blog, another hotel has opened in Hyderabad. Last Thursday I opened the Metro Plus supplement of The Hindu only to find an advertisement announcing the opening of ‘Le Café’ an ‘Europen Style Sidewalk Café.’ ‘Le Café is located along the corridor connecting Novotel to HICC way out at Madhapur. It sounds like just the sort of thing the neighbourhood in Jubilee Hills lacked so I am rather glad for those Jubilee Hills folks. Now they have yet another place to go to in case they miss such a place in Hyderabad.

Yesterday while going towards City Center Mall in Banjara Hills I noticed that another hotel –The Banjara Gateway- is coming up. Since from the looks of the place it might be another month or so before it finally opens, the Jubilee Hills folks can go easy on the drooling for the time being. However, The Banjara Gateway looks like the sort of place the Jubilee Hills crowd may not think of much because for one thing, it is located bang on the roadside on the busy Road No. 1 and another, it doesn’t sound exotic enough for them to drive all the way from Jubilee Hills.

The Longest Wait for the Shortest Book Launch
Meanwhile, I attended a book reading at the Crossword store in City Center Mall on Friday. I had been looking for a good excuse to drop in at a bookstore so when I read about the book reading of Kanika Dhillon’s ‘Bombay Duck is a Fish’ I made plans to be present. Like a sincere government bloke I reached the place well before seven in the evening. After waiting for forty five minutes I was just planning to leave irritated by the announcements of a screechy compere when the author made an appearance at a quarter to eight. In the meanwhile all the 30 odd chairs were filled up with the press people carrying enormous camera bags and tripods like they were going to a war. When the stylish author walked in the cameramen began their photosession right at the entrance that lasted longer than the actual book launch which lasted not more than ten minutes. During those ten odd minutes exactly four questions were asked and answered. I was glad I dropped my plan to buy the book since I saw another book that I picked up. I will write about it in The Sunday Haul post on Friday.

A Unique Expo
I saw an ad on the back of a bus sometime last week. It seems Hyderabad is hosting a ‘National Expo on Obesity Treatment’ somewhere in Ameerpet sometime in the coming days. No wonder with so many hotels and so much to eat in Hyderabad they’ve chosen our city for the event. I wonder how many of those visiting this expo will be from Jubilee Hills.

Next post on Wednesday: Morning Calm and Father's Day Thoughts

The Sunday Haul- Two Mags and Three Books

2011-06-17T16:00:00.001+05:30

It had been quite sometime since I had come across one of my favourite magazines- the Conde Nast Traveler- at Abids. The last time I found it was almost three months ago in March. So when I saw the March 2011 issue of Conde Nast Traveler last Sunday at Abids I picked it up feeling quite happy I’d get to read about travel though I am not doing much of it of late. There was another surprise in store when I found the April 2011 issue a little later with another seller.

Finding the two issue of CNT seemed a sign that I was in for a good haul of books though I wasn’t really keen to buy any book. It is becoming hard for me not to pick up any books at Abids on Sundays. Perhaps the only solution to this craziness would be to stop going to Sundays. Otherwise if I go to Abids I cannot return without a book in my hand. This Sunday I came back with three more books apart from the two issue of Conde Nast Traveler.

The first book I found was Amit Choudhry’s ‘Freedom Song’ that I got for thirty rupees. It is a bit difficult to find second hand copies of books by modern Indian authors at Abids. The other week I had found ‘Lunatic in My Head’ and this week it was ‘Freedom Song.’ I had also spotted Tishani Doshi’s ‘The Pleasure Seekers’ last Sunday but this Sunday I could not locate it.

The second find of the day was Jonathan Raban’s ‘Arabia’ which appeared familiar to me. After some hesitation I finally bought the book for fifty rupees. Later after I got home and went through my list I found that I already possess a copy of the same title. I had forgotten that I had bought it three years ago for thirty rupees. I did not regret it though since there is always someone who likes to read travelogues.

The last find of the day was Elmore Leonard’s ‘Out of Sight’ that I found in a heap of books selling for twenty rupees. I already have copies of this book but this copy had a different cover. I was surprised to find that ‘Out of Sight’ was made into a movie starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. Now I want to reread ‘Out of Sight’ once again and try to find the DVD of the movie and watch it. How dumb of me not to have known about the movie!

Lunch by Accident at The Grand Kakatiya

2011-06-15T17:00:00.003+05:30

It isn’t everyday that one (if one happens to be a government servant) gets to dine at hotels like the Grand Kakatiya. Last week I had lunch there unexpectedly. The last time I dined at Grand Kakatiya was way back in the year 1998. Quite coincidentally, on both occasions, I’m pleased to state, I did not have to pay for my meal. The first time, it was actually a prize. Something I wrote won me a free meal for four persons. So I gathered four of my friends and had a nice la carte meal at Kakatiya which one of my friends still remembers. Last week however I was at Grand Kakatiya to attend an official meeting at short notice. Lunch was by accident. More later on how it happened, but first, the food.

No matter how many articles on haute cuisine, how many books by top chefs I’ve read so far, my taste buds remain steadfastly loyal to Hyderabadi stuff, especially biryani. I looked at the items on the buffet spread at the Grand Kakatiya and felt a bit giddy. Since I am a vegetarian by choice, I started off with vegetables and stuff like that but couldn’t really relish it. On the contrary, the dum ka murgh and kacche gosht ka biryani appeared really interesting so I decided to have a go at them so I could write about it here and make everyone drool. Also, I could get to write about how the biryani in Grand Kakatiya compares with the stuff in joints like Paradise and Bawarchi.

I really cannot say that the biryani at Grand Kakatiya was better than the biryani at Paradise etc but it was really good. Biryani goes down well when you eat it with bare fingers, sitting down in a noisy, crowded Irani joint where the air is redolent with the aroma of biryani. But since that day I had to have my lunch standing in the stately Hyder Mahal, with a spoon in one hand and the plate in the other, I couldn’t really tuck it in. But I had enough to say that the food, especially the biryani, was really good stuff, with almost no oil, just spicy enough and light on the stomach. The meat was tender, well cooked, and tasty enough to make me wonder, albeit briefly, why I had chosen to be a vegetarian. The biryani at Grand Kakatiya gets 99 out of 100 marks. The deduction of one mark is for the absence of any aroma though I’d understand that they don’t want everyone in the hotel to know there’s biryani on the platter that day like in places like Paradise where you can begin to smell the biryani from Ranigunj itself.

After biryani the only thing that one can eat is stuff like either Qubani ka Meetha or Dabal ka Meetha and nothing else, if there’s any space left in the stomach. Though I was not exactly in the mood to eat anything else, the guy at the dessert table ladled out two large spoonfuls of Qubani ka Meetha in a bowl and gave it to me like he wanted to help me put on some weight. I was glad I accepted it because the meetha was really good, thick, viscous and so really sweet that I finished off the whole bowl which wasn’t a good idea. The moment I put back the empty bowl the guy immediately asked me if I wanted to try out the Hot Chocolate Mud Pie. Though I did not want to try anything at that moment the guy looked at me like he had himself prepared it. So, in it went, the Hot Chocolate Mud Pie, the first time I was eating something with Mud’ in the name which, quite surprisingly, was rather good.

It was such a pleasant experience, the lunch at GK after the numbing office routine and the usual food that I felt like thanking everyone present in GK that day. But I realized I had to thank myself for doing something I wasn’t expected to do. What happened was that the other week I had been asked to prepare a report for a Parliamentary Committee quite urgently. I managed to do it with the help of my two colleagues and forgot all about it until last week when I was told I had to be present at the Grand Kakatiya at ten sharp. I ended up in GK feeling quite nervous since a PC was something one couldn’t afford to take lightly. But mercifully it went off quite smoothly and I thought that was it when I was told about the lunch.

Next Post on Friday: The Sunday Haul

What's New in Hyderabad?

2011-06-13T20:14:00.003+05:30

Last week, I found there’s growing evidence that people are realizing that there’s life in Musheerabad after all. After Cafe Coffee Day, now Musheerabad (Padmaraonagar to be exact) has a Jawed Habib Branch. I learnt this from a handbill that dropped out of the newspaper one morning sometime last week. Though I have no actual need to visit Jawed Habib I was glad about the development. According to the handbill Jawed Habib now has branches at Banjara Hills, Himayatnagar, Karkhana, Kompally, Koti, Madhapur, Marredpally, Mehdipatnam, Penderghast Road, Srinagar Colony, Tarnaka and also, quite intriguingly, at Moosarambagh. I can understand a Jawed Habib branch at Kompally, but Moosarambagh? The only thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Moosarambagh is the Musi nala, which, in case you didn’t know, is the birth place of almost all mosquitoes in Hyderabad and is widely regarded as the Mosquito Headquarters of Hyderabad.

More Glitter
It wouldn’t amount to an underestimation to say that there could be anything between 500 to 1000 gold and jewellery stores in Hyderabad alone. One could think the number is enough to cater to the needs of the Hyderabadi crowd since gold isn’t something one gotta have in order to breathe properly though the women folk might differ from that view. Anyway, finding that these outlets aren’t enough somebody in the jewellery trade got the bright idea to organize an 'Hitex International Gems and Jewellery Expo' out in Madhapur. According to the news item from where I got this information, there would be over a hundred exhibitors from Amritsar, Agra, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad etc including exhibitors from Myanmar and Thailand with stalls selling everything from gold, gems, beads, ornaments, pearls, jewellery etc. In short it means that there is a whole lot of glitter on sale so quite naturally you’ve got to pay even to look at it. The entry fees of Rs 200, I’m sure, isn’t a deterrent to the sort of crowd that would have driven all the way to Hitex from places all over Hyderabad and beyond to buy more stuff. In case you were planning to go there, alas, today was the last day.

Yet Another Hotel
So while that’s the latest development on the gold and jewellery front, there’s another development on the hotel front. A new hotel with a mouthful of a name has come up at Madhapur. I heard that Aditya Sarovar Premier, a complete hotel with rooms, a pool and a poolside grill, 24 hour coffee shop, 10,000 SFT banquet facilities, conference facilites, and of course, an oriental restaurant and lounge bar has quietly come up in Hyderabad. This too is located at Madhapur, which everyone in Hyderabad knows, isn’t too far from Jubilee Hills. So, the Jubilee Hills crowd has one more place to fill up in case they are feeling too bored with the places in Jubilee Hills.

So that's what is new in Hyderabad.

Next post is on Wednesday titled 'Lunch by Accident at the Grand Kakatiya'

The Sunday Haul

2011-06-10T20:20:00.001+05:30

It is only natural that after more than two decades browsing for second hand books one acquires or develops an instinct for the good book. Seldom has it happened in my experience that I had picked up a relatively unknown (to me) title on a hunch and found it to be a good pick. Recently, Jo Nesbo’s ‘The Leopard’ was one such find but the one I remember quite well was picking up ‘The Saddest Pleasure’ and later finding that it was a bestseller. I felt my instincts were on spot when I read in TGS about this same book. On Sunday my eyes fell on the title ‘Night Train to Lisbon’ and I picked it up. I felt it was a different book, one that could turn out to be a good read. Of course, the blurbs at the back had a lot of praise but I’ve learnt not to trust it too much. Anyway, I picked it up for fifty rupees and later when I read the online reviews I found that my hunch had been right. It was indeed a very good book so I felt justified in breaking my resolve not to buy any books.

However, there was another book I bought, one that I couldn’t resist buying. Only the week before I had given one of the copies I had of Elmore Leonard’s ‘Freaky Deaky’ to a friend so when I found the same title again at Abids I couldn’t help buying it. But this was a different edition, of Arbor House- William Morrow with Elmore Leonard’s photograph by Anne Liebovitz on the back cover. It was for sale for only thirty rupees so the temptation was doubled. Anyway, there was a book I did not buy though I should have. I saw a hardcover copy of Tishani Doshi’s ‘The Pleasure Seekers’ which I had to leave behind. The guy asked two hundred and odd rupees for it so I felt it would be better to buy a new copy sometime in the future and moved on.

The only thing that got my attention in this month’s The Literary Review was the front page article by Parvathi Nayar about books by doctors. I’m currently reading Atul Gawande’s ‘Complications’ which was mentioned in the article. I learnt that his first book was ‘The Checklist Manifesto’ that I want to read someday. Another article was Vikram Kapur’s column where he bemoaned how some writers don’t write because there’s no place to publish. His idea that well known magazines like Outlook, India Today should publish short stories seemed good but impracticable when it is clear that these magazines have more ads than articles.

The Literary Review also had a detailed piece on Rupa’s new venture ‘Aleph’ with David Davidar at the helm. Though I had a vague idea of some of the publishing houses in India and could recognise some names like David Davidar, Ravi Singh etc I never really paid much attention to the names in publishing world. But ever since I started writing my first novel I began keeping track of who works where. In TOI the other day I got a complete low down on the latest happenings in the publishing world in India.

Tamasha Stores- 2

2011-06-07T21:21:00.000+05:30

If there’s anything one should give credit to the Hyderabadi men for, it is the manner in which they spare no expense when it comes to decking up their women. So much so that the guys really don’t bother about their own appearance and don’t spend much on clothes which has the unfortunate effect of making them appear so unstylish that you can pick out a Hyderabadi guy from a crowd just by his clothes alone if not from the dumb expression on his face. Or else there’s really no reason why there should be at least one store selling gold and jewelry opening almost every week in Hyderabad. Last week I read that ‘Hyderabad’s biggest gold store’ –‘Jos Alukka’s’ was being inaugurated by, of all the people, Mahesh Babu, the actor. (Odd how these supposedly ‘macho’ heroes are peddling women's stuff - NTR for Malabar Gold, Nagarjuna for Kalyan Jewellers.)

I get the impression that after food, it is perhaps gold that the Hyderabadi spends on most. There are whole streets lined with gold and jewelry stores, like in Punjagutta, Abids, Basheerbagh-Liberty and even Pathergatti in the old city and so on, where almost every shop is packed with people buying gold and gold jewelry like it is going out of fashion. On the same day I also read about the Postal Department joining hands with Reliance Money Infrastructure Limited to sell gold coins through post offices as if there aren’t enough stores already selling the yellow metal. If there’s proof needed about how loaded the Hyderabadis are then one only has to look at the crowds in these stores. Then there was the jaw dropping news item that I read in the same page in the same newspaper about MBS Jewellers’ plans to sell gold and silver in the form of bars and coins like gold and silver jewelry wasn’t enough. It’s on page 2 of The Hindu dated June 4, 2011.

Then there was the news of the opening of ‘Women’s World’ at Punjagutta, a mall exclusively for women to buy their stuff from. I wonder why they had to open such a store (though I agree it is a good idea) when almost every second store in the city sells only stuff meant for women. There’s little for guys to choose from and fewer shops to buy. Wherever one goes, one sees only stores where the majority customers are women. There’s nothing wrong in it though but I wonder who they dress up for considering how the average Hyderabadi man has eyes only for biryani. I also wish these tamasha stores wouldn’t advertise so often, so loudly and so widely through handbills, newspaper and television ads, hoardings and what not. It gets a bit too much after a while and gives the impression as if we Hyderabadis don’t really have anything worthwhile to do except eat, drink, and shop.

The Sunday Haul

2011-06-03T20:25:00.001+05:30

I know I cannot trust myself to return from places like Abids empty handed, without at least one book in hand. The other Sunday I had resolved not to buy any more books at Abids for at least the time I manage to read about two dozen books. But last Sunday that resolve of mine crumbled when I chanced upon a book I that I had been on the lookout for. This book was on my ‘to read’ list and I was just waiting to save enough to pick a new copy someday at a bookstore. But when I saw a second hand copy at Abids I realized I could buy it at a fraction of its original cost. Somewhere at the back of my mind was another resolve of mine- not to buy used copies of books by the latest Indian writers and to buy only original, new copies at bookstores. But it was impossible to resist buying the second hand copy of Anjum Hasan’s first novel ‘Lunatic in My Head’ that was for sale at seventy five rupees. Anjum Hasan is one of the finest poets in the country and I’ve been following her work since a long time so finding the book was a lucky thing.

I’m waiting for next Sunday because it would be the first Sunday of the month which means that there will be ‘The Literary ‘Review’ supplement in The Hindu. There might be something about Philip Roth winning the Man Booker and the attendant controversy. I keep coming across Roth’s ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ and ‘Goodbye Columbus’ at Abids in case anyone is interested. Though I have ‘Goodbye Columbus,’ I am yet to read it. Another piece of news that sort of made me glad was the one about the Naipaul-Theroux patch up that I read had happened last week. Both VS Naipaul and Paul Theroux are writers I enjoy reading so the spat between them was something which bothered me a bit. Also, this patch up could just be the excuse I need to read Theroux’s book ‘Sir Vidia’s Shadow’ which in a way contributed to the breakup between them. I had bought this book more than a couple of years ago and it sits on my bookshelf waiting for me to pick it up and start reading.

I was disappointed that Best Books have not held a sale of second hand books this summer which they otherwise do regularly. I wonder what the reasons could be. Maybe they couldn’t get space at YMCA, Secunderabad where they usually have their sale. Another grouse is that the program ‘Just Books’ hasn’t been telecast on NDTV Profit channel last week too and I wonder if they have decided to do away with the program altogether. It might not be the case but it sure hurts to learn that the television channels do not give as much importance to books as they do to other stuff.

Two More Eateries and a Third on the Way

2011-05-31T21:19:00.000+05:30

It has ceased to surprise me any more to read about the opening of newer eateries in Hyderabad, especially in the Jubilee Hills areas. So it isn’t with any particular alarm that I write here about the two new eateries I read about recently somewhere. While the two new restaurants are not exactly located in Jubilee Hills, they are close enough. However, while these two new restaurants have actually opened their door to patrons there’s indication of another new restaurant coming up right in the middle of Jubilee Hills where all the foodie action is. The first eatery called ‘Big Dosa’ opened its doors in the Hitec City at Madhapur which is more or less the backyard of Jubilee Hills where incidentally the original Big Dosa is located at Road No 45. The second eatert, another branch of ‘Kholanis,’ opened within sneezing distance of Jubilee Hills, at Toli Chowki.

It isn’t also surprising to learn that there’s a certain class of people in the city who don’t put anything into their mouths unless one of the ingredients is cheese or such exotic stuff. These folks simply cannot bring themselves to eat stuff the way it is eaten by everyone else. They seem to want dishes more suited to their status/pay/style than to their tastes. While everyone in the country likes to have their dosas with nothing other than the potato-onion-peas filling with coconut chutney and sambar these folks seem to prefer their dosas with fillings of Cheddar Cheese and Feta Cheese. It is to cater to the tastes of this kind of crowd that places like Big Dosa come up. It is one thing to eat food according to one’s hunger and quite another thing to eat food according to one’s earnings. So, the honest-to- goodness humble dosa priced at twenty or thirty rupees isn’t classy enough for this crowd. They want a dosa that has something more than the plain filling never mind that it costs a couple of hundreds. So here we are, the ordinary crowd, going through life eating dosas with potato-onion fillings while there’s this hip crowd going in for dosas with cheese fillings. I wonder what this crowd is trying to tell us- that the calories from the potatoes in the usual filling aren’t enough for them or that their tastes are exotic and more evolved than anyone.

The second new eatery in Hyderabad is, according to Serish Nanisetty who reviewed the place in MP last Monday, is ‘another branch of Kholani’s’ at Toli Chowki. Toli Chowki, for those not familiar with Hyderabad is not far from Jubilee Hills. Jubilee Hills, I imagine, must have more than three fourths of the classy restaurants of Hyderabad though not more than .00000001% of Hyderabad’s population lives there. The other news is that Big Dosa has plans to open four more new outlets in the city and I only hope they open at least one of the branches in this part of the city. On my way to Landmark on Sunday I saw a board announcing that Hotel Sitara is set to open very soon at the place where once a store existed on Road No 12 close to Ohri’s and other joints. I don’t know how soon is soon but I am prepared to wait. What else can I do?

A Bookless Week

2011-05-27T11:14:00.002+05:30

The other Sunday after I picked up China Mieville’s ‘Perdido Station Street’ which was a 900-plus page tome I decided against buying any more books for a while, at least until I finished reading about a dozen books. Though that was the decision, not to buy books, it did not mean that I could not go to Abids because no matter what, that is one thing I cannot stop myself from doing. Quite ironically, it so happened that I could not go to Abids last Sunday. The kid was down with fever and so I had to take him to the doctor who gave us a noon appointment which was neither here nor there. It was too hot to go in the afternoon and so I altogether dropped the idea of going to Abids last Sunday and stayed at home.

Without the usual visit to Abids it did not feel to me like a Sunday at all. I felt that something was missing. I tried to fill the gap by reading as many Sunday papers as possible which only sharpened the feeling of deprivation after I read the book reviews. I realized it would have been enough if I had merely driven to Abids and come back after a glance at all the books. It also did not help that on NDTV Profit the one program I look forward to- Just Book- was not telecast. I wonder why they decide to do such a thing that damages their credibility. In place of Just Books was a program on the latest gadgets as if they are somehow superior to books.

All through the week I went around feeling oddly empty in some corner of the heart. There was an imbalance that somehow upset the whole week and one that I did not try to correct by visiting an used book store which I normally do. But the only silver lining was coming across the mention of a book that I feel I must buy. I do not now remember where I read about Ryan Van Meter’s ‘If You Knew Then What I Know Now’ but it is one title I want to buy even if it costs me a bomb. I don’t know how I intend to lay my hands on this book but right now all I want is the next few days to fly by so I can wake up to a Sunday filled with books.

Parking Pareshaani

2011-05-24T10:07:00.001+05:30

If you thought there can’t be anything worse than the way Hyderabadis drive on the roads then obviously you haven’t seen how they park their vehicles. No one can beat Hyderabadis when it comes to parking. It is an incontrovertible fact that Hyderabadis do not know how (and where) to park, which isn’t surprising considering the way they drive.

Unlike the rest of the country we Hyderabadis have our own unique style of doing anything. There’s the Hyderabadi style of talking, of coming late, and of course, the inimitable style of driving that we all know very well, rather too well I should say. Then there’s the Hyderabadi style of gawking, of spitting. To this list, I must add the Hyderabad style of parking, which is, come to think of it, very, very simple. So simple that only four words are needed to describe it- ‘Park Wherever You Stop.’ This, by the way, is the same principle behind another favorite Hyderabadi activity- spit wherever you are/want.

So, that’s the principle behind all the cars parked bang in front of stores, shops, hotels etc in Hyderabad. A Hyderabadi goes out to shop or eat, he simply stops his (or her) car in front of said store/hotel, opens the door and gets out. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if the car is blocking the entrance, or is in the middle of the road. For all purposes and as far as the car owner is concerned, the car is considered as parked. But it doesn’t mean that the car owner isn’t bothered about his car. He doesn’t simply leave his car just like that. Every ten minutes or so he darts out to check if his car is still there and has not been stolen. If the guard happens to protest, the car owner tells him ‘just two minutes’ and disappears inside only to come out after two hours or longer depending on what he has gone inside for. But when he hears the hooting of the Traffic Police van he runs out like the store has caught fire. When he sees traffic cops he puts on a stupid grin (another Hyderabadi specialty) and lies to them that he had got in just then. The traffic cops who are after all Hyderabadis and hence generous and considerate let him off. Which is why the Hyderabadi guys keep parking that way.

Of late, I’ve noticed the evolution of another parking style. Hyderabadis, rich and poor, love to buy fruits, especially bananas, from pushcart vendors parked on the roadside. The true Hyderabadi simply stops his car near the cart and bargains with the vendor through the car window. He does it without out stepping out of the car like it isn’t worth the effort. He won’t get down from the car even if the vendor is on the passenger side of the car. He simply calls the vendor to his side or leans across the seat and bargains with the vendor through the window on the passenger side.

This is one reason why I said no one can beat Hyderabadis at parking. More on Hyderabad Parking style on another future post.

A Mini Super Haul

2011-05-20T10:14:00.002+05:30

Another Mini Super Haul

An interesting observation I made regarding something common between some of the books in my recent hauls is that they are not only super finds they are also supersized. Some of them like Naipaul’s ‘A House for Mr. Biswas’ and Jo Nesbo’s ‘The Leopard’ seem to be thicker than the common brick running into more than six hundred pages. I thought that there wouldn’t be any such hauls for some time to come but I was wrong. Last Sunday one of the books in the haul was a brick and half sized with more than nine hundred pages. The book in question is China Miéville’s ‘Perdido Street Station’ that I got for only twenty rupees. Since the past two Sundays I had been seeing this book lying on the pavement but hesitated to buy it considering its size though I knew it could turn out to be a good find. I had read about China Miéville on Sridala Swami’s blog sometime ago and got the impression that the author’s books might be worth reading. When I checked the reviews of PSS online I decided to pick it up and last Sunday I bought it I have no idea how I’ll find PSS but since China Miéville is a new name. I haven’t read any SF titles since a long time and I’m also not much into SF. PSS is going to be a completely new experience for me but my biggest worry is not where to keep the book but when I will find the time to read it.

The second find of the day was a book I thought I had missed buying a couple of months ago. The first time I spotted Penelope Lively’s ‘Beyond the Blue Mountains’ in a heap of books selling for twenty rupees I did not buy it. But the next Sunday when I looked for it again I couldn’t find it. I thought it was gone. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find the hardcover book in the heap at the same place. ‘Beyond the Blue Mountains’ is a short story collection with fourteen stories. The book begins with first story Beyond the Blue Mountains and the rest are The Children of Grupp, The Slovenian Giantess, In Olden Times, Season of Goodwill, The Clarinetist and the Bride’s Aunt, Marriage Lines, The Cat’s Meat Man, A Christmas Card to One and All, The Five Thousand and One Nights, The First Wife, The Butterfly and the Tin of Paint, Crumbs of Wisdom, Loved Ones: A Christmas Fairy Tale. The book appears to be a discard from Newport Borough Libraries judging from the stamp on the front page.

After all these Super Hauls I guess it is time I put a stop to this buying spree temporarily or at least until I finish reading about two dozen books. It makes no sense to go on adding more books to a collection that is increasing at an alarming rate and also taking up every available corner of the house. So, next Sunday I might return empty handed from Abids though I cannot help going there out of sheer habit. Instead of the posts on the haul I will attempt to write reviews of some of the books I finished reading recently. I am currently reading Atul Gawande’s ‘Complications’ and have just begun Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Playing with Fire.
’
Just when I was wondering what Paul Theroux next title will be I read on ‘The Atlantic’ about his latest book ‘The Tao of Travel’. TOT, as Paul Theroux describes it, ‘his personal anthology of the books he likes and why’ and elsewhere is mentioned as ‘intended as a guidebook, a how to, a miscellany, a vade mecum, a reading list, a reminiscence.’ It sounds like a book that I have to read as soon as I can lay my hands on it. In the interview in ‘The Atlantic’ here’s what Paul Theroux says about blogging: ‘I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look to me illiterate, they look hasty, like someone babbling. To me writing is a considered act. It's something which is a great labor of thought and consideration. A blog doesn't seem to have any literary merit at all. It's a chatty account of things that have happened to that particular person.’

Very true indeed.

The Tamasha Stores

2011-05-17T19:03:00.002+05:30

While eating remains the number one obsession of us Hyderabadis, shopping comes a close second. So when Hyderabadis aren’t doing anything particularly useful they are found to be either in hotels eating like the world is going to run out of food or in stores shopping like there’s no tomorrow. In fact I tend to think that these two activities do take up a lot of the Hyderabadi’s day leaving him little time for anything else which is why so little work gets done here. Naturally it isn’t only the restaurant scene in Hyderabad that I’m very interested in but also shopping and stores where it all happens that makes for equally fascinating study.

Of late in Hyderabad newer stores are popping up with a regularity that almost matches the rate at which restaurants are opening their doors in Jubilee Hills. Last Friday the papers were full of ads about the opening of another new store called ‘Kalyanakanchi’ that was being inaugurated by the actress Genelia. Surprisingly, the model for 'Kalyanakanchi' turns out to be Sonali Bendre. Here I have to make a confession. Sonali, at a certain stage of my life, was someone I could have done anything for. Here again I digress a bit. Sonali, by the way, also finds place in my novel. While everyone else was crazy about the oleaginous ‘dhak, dhak’ dame, it was the svelte Sonali I was enamored of until she went and married that Behl chap, a producer who unfortunately doesn’t have a single hit to his name till date . It makes me wonder how he is able to look after poor Sonali. No wonder she is forced to anchor shows like Indian Idol on television and do some modeling here and there for the kind of stores with names like ‘Kalyanakanchi.’ Sigh.

Anyway, ‘Kalyanakanchi’ happens to be yet another of those mega stores from Tamil Nadu that have now completely taken over Hyderabad. There was a time when women folk from loaded families used to travel all the way to places like Kanchi and Madurai to buy silk saris by the dozen whenever there was a marriage in the family. This must have prompted the owners of the stores to open their branches in Hyderabad. Hence the profusion of stores like the recently opened ‘South India Mall’, ‘Kalanikethan,’ ‘Chennai Shopping Mall’ and so on, all from Rajni land. A side effect is that these new stores have edged out the RS Brothers, JC Brothers, the Bommana Brothers, and Chandana Brothers crowd much to their consternation. I’m glad though because no day seemed to pass without finding a dozen glossy, colorful pamphlets in one’s newspaper which though irritating is a change from the drab pamphlets of schools, summer camps, yoga courses etc that one finds in the papers these days.

Looking at these stores from Chennai fills me with awe. It appears to me that the women folk in Chennai don’t seem to shop in mega stores unless surrounded by a million lights and chandeliers which is how all these stores are. At some of these stores (which for some reason invariably have branches in Kukatpalli and Patny) I have even spotted a couple in traditional attire greeting the customers at the entrance. I haven’t yet gone to one but sometime soon I will as soon as I muster up enough courage to enter because these stores give the impression that they won’t let you out of the door unless you buy something more than socks or hankies.

Another Sunday Super Haul

2011-05-13T22:18:00.004+05:30

Nothing like it happened before in the two and half decades of my book buying experience. Friday last I read somewhere online about a new Scandinavian crime writer called Jo Nesbo tipped to be the next Stieg Larrson. The writer of the article was fulsome in his (or her, I don’t remember) praise of Nesbo’s writing especially his character, Inspector Harry Hole. Only the name Jo Nesbo had registered in my mind and that was it. To be honest I never expected even in my dreams about finding any Jo Nesbo title anywhere in Hyderabad much less at Abids. But on Sunday I got one of the most pleasant shocks of my book hunting life when I spotted Jo Nesbo’s absolutely latest title. More about that later.

But before I got to Abids I had stopped at Chikkadpally to check if Atul Gawande’s ‘Complications’ that I had not picked up the Sunday before was still lying around. It was, and I snapped it up for eighty rupees. I stopped at another seller on the other side of the road and saw another book I simply couldn’t resist buying. Standing out starkly among the faded covers of other old books was an absolutely new copy of VS Naipaul’s ‘A House for Mr. Biswas.’ I haven’t read it so far because I did not possess a copy of the book. Since I was actually waiting for ages to find a good copy I bought it though I had to pay quite a bit for it. It is more than six hundred pages long and I plan to read it on a long holiday if I ever get lucky enough to afford one.

Two hundred rupees on just two books, (eighty for Atul Gawande’s ‘Complications’ and a hundred and twenty rupees for ‘A House for Mr Biswas’) was too high for my second hand book buying persona. I did not want to spend any more on books or anything for that matter till the next Sunday. I thought I was pretty firm about that decision but when I saw Jo Nesbo’s ‘The Leopard’ I forgot all about my resolve. It took a while for the fact to sink in that an absolutely bestselling and latest title by an exciting new writer I had read about only two days back would be on the pavements of Abids less than a year after publication. I don’t know how the book got here but there’s something scribbled on the cover in ink that might offer a clue. Whatever, finding the book made me feel very, very good.

I am absolutely certain that the guy who was selling the book would have had the faintest idea about the author or the title. Maybe it was the number of pages in the book (611) that must have made him think that the book was worth two hundred and fifty bucks that he quoted to me. But since I was already desperate to buy it I bargained just a wee bit out of habit and got the book for two hundred rupees. I am sure the price I paid for it isn’t more than a fraction of the real price of the book. And that’s called luck.

MORNING CALM AT THE NECKLACE ROAD

2011-05-11T19:38:00.002+05:30

The feeling of calm and peace that spending a couple of hours alone watching the sunrise over the lake at the Necklace Road is something not many people in Hydeerabad get to do often. It is enough to make me get up earlier than usual and that too on a Sunday morning once a month to take a twenty-minute ride to Necklace Road to experience some badly needed solitude. So last Sunday was one such day when it was time for me to cleanse the mind of all tension, needless worries and such mental clutter.

When I reached Necklace Road it was already daylight but the sun had not yet come up. I settled on my usual spot and waited for the sun to rise, enveloped in the silence of the morning. A breeze, gentle but strong enough to ripple the surface of the lake, blew continuously adding to the pleasant experience. When the sun finally appeared it wasn’t the usual crimson disc but as a pale white orb that soon turned orange. I got up to take a couple pictures of the sun rise standing near the edge of the path and returned to my bench only to find it occupied. My old friend, the one who exercises while listening to the morning news on radio had taken possession of the bench. He was one of those middle aged gentlemen who have disapproving expressions on their faces even on such pleasant mornings like they are unhappy with something. I had no choice but to move on since the look he gave me conveyed the impression that he felt I was wasting my time sitting idly instead of performing energetic calisthenics like him. I moved away to another bench before I received an unwanted lecture on the benefits of physical exercise, which I was sure he had on his mind to do when he first saw me sitting immobile.

I found another empty bench and sat trying to think of at least one thing that was going right in my life at the moment. I had begun yet another round of revision of the manuscript of the novel I’ve been working on since ages. It might be a long time before it sees the light of the day if the progress of the revision is any indication. I planned a tentative deadline to have it ready and into the hands of a publisher sometime in November which is normally a lucky month for me. In November good things happen in my life though I cannot recollect any at the moment. Anyway, November is too far away and in any case I will be posting here about further progress on the book.

When it became too warm to sit in the open I decided to leave Necklace road and go to Adarsh for the next pleasant part of my monthly Necklace Road routine. I bought two newspapers and settled down at a table in Adarsh with the idea of spending at least an hour reading the Sunday papers from end to end. The hotel was filled with the usual early morning crowd of groups of friends chatting excitedly and lonely men sipping their teas in silence. I couldn’t my friend, the smoker anywhere which was a good thing or I would have to contend with cigarette smoke. The tea that the waiter put before me was very good, light and tasty which further enhanced my pleasant moods.

Though in Irani hotels the taste of the tea doesn’t change the same cannot be said of the waiters. They keep changing and one always finds new faces on each visit. The one who brought my tea asked to read the paper which was a bit of a surprise because finding waiters who read English papers in Hyderabad is something of a rarity. So while I was engrossed in the main papers he went through the Sunday supplements. In between he put aside the papers to serve tea but returned to my table and resumed his perusal of the papers.

Afterwards, feeling good about the morning’s experiences I got back home to get ready for my next Sunday routine- the visit to Abids. Call it coincidence or what I had an unusual spell of luck finding two rather good books. The next post (on Friday) will be one on the Sunday’s Super Haul.

Next post on Friday; Another Super Haul

On The Literary Review in The Hindu

2011-05-09T19:29:00.003+05:30

(This is the first post of this week's three posts. Next post will appear Wednesday evening, and the third on Friday.)

The previous Sunday (1/5/2011) being the first Sunday of the month was one I was eagerly waiting for. India’s one-of- a- kind literary supplement in a Sunday newspaper is brought out by The Hindu on the first Sunday of each month. What’s reviewed and what’s written in TLR is something I take seriously though not seriously enough to dash out and buy all the good books mentioned in it. The TLR has intelligent reviews of some of the latest titles in the bookstores, interviews with writers, and regular columns by Pradeep Sebastian (on collecting books), Vikram Kapur (on creative writing), important articles on Indian literature, writers (past and present) and other insightful articles which makes TLR not only a treasure trove of information but also a pleasure to read.

In this month’s (May 2011) The Literary Review supplement I read reviews of four books that I might have thought of buying right away if I were in some other job that paid me well. One book that I would like to buy nevertheless is Anuradha Roy’s ‘the folded earth’ that got a good review by Arunava Sinha. An interesting detail in the book about one of the main character Maya being from Hyderabad is one reason that I want to read the book apart from the high praise that the book is getting in just about every review I’ve read so far. I also want to read Anuradha Roy’s first book ‘The Atlas of Impossible Longing’ if I can find it at Abids.

Another book that’s been praised in the review in TLR and elsewhere is Jamil Ahmad’s ‘The Wandering Falcon’ which is set in the tribal regions bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan. What is interesting about the book is that its author, Jamil Ahmad, is seventy eight year old and a bureaucrat which is one reason why I (also a bureaucrat) want to read ‘The Wandering Falcon’ as soon as I can. Rakhshanda Jalil, the reviewer, pointed out that one of the high points of the book was Jamil Ahmad’s writing which she described as ‘simple, spare, stark…the finest writing one has read in a very long time in English by a South Asian writer’ which is another reason for me to want to read the book.

Other interesting articles in TLR included Jai Arjun Singh’s review of Orhan Pamuk’s ‘The Naïve and Sentimental Novelist’, and a review of his own book ‘The Popcorn Essayists’ that I plan to buy. There was Navtej Sarna on John Steinbeck’s ‘Travel’s With Charley.’ Though I have not read Aditya Sudarshan’s first novel I have read some of his interesting and well written articles in TLR and am convinced that like Chandrahas Choudhury he is another promising writer to watch out for. Therefore, I was surprised to read Tulsi Badrinath’s panning Aditya Sudarshan’s second book ‘Show Me a Hero’ in his review. There was yet another review of Jonathan Franzen’s ‘Freedom’ which made me wonder when I am going to begin reading it and find out if it is as good as the reviews say it is. Geoff Dyer’s ‘Otherwise Known as the Human Condition’ which Pradeep Sebastian wrote in his column, is one I want to read if I can lay my hands on a free copy.

Next Post: Morning Calm at the Necklace Road

The Sunday Haul

2011-05-06T09:05:00.001+05:30

It cannot be anything but a lucky coincidence when something like what took place on Sunday happens frequently. One of the books in the Super Haul on the previous Sunday was Atul Gawande’s ‘Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance’ and I had posted that I would be on the lookout for his earlier book ‘Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science’ and would be glad to find it. Well, I did find the book last Sunday but did not buy it for reasons that will be obvious by the end of this post.

It was one of my brothers who introduced Walter Mosley’s books to me and since then I have read quite a few of his Easy Rawlins titles. I do come across his books at Abids but have not felt the inclination to buy other books. But when I saw this title ‘The Man in My Basement’ I couldn’t help feeling that this was an unusual book. My hunch turned out to be correct for TMMB was indeed a different kind of book. I only hope somebody tells me it is a good find because I am not sure though I paid thirty rupees for it. The blurbs and reviews also say it is a good book and I hope it turns out to be one though I have no reason to believe otherwise since Mosley is one good writer.

One title that is on my list of must buy books is a title by Cormac McCarthy ‘Blood Meridian’ that I am still looking for. On Sunday I somehow couldn’t recollect the title and thought ‘All the Pretty Horses’ was the one I was looking for so I picked it up though I had to shell out fifty rupees for it. When I looked up my ‘Must Buy and Read’ list I realized I had picked up the wrong Cormac McCarthy title but I did not feel any regret. One of the blurbs on the back cover was Saul Bellow’s line about McCarthy’s writing which said ‘absolutely overpowering use of language…life giving and death-dealing sentence’ which is making me want to begin the book right away.

After spending eighty rupees on the haul and not exactly in the mood to add more books to the haul I stopped at Chikkadpally to look at the titles on display at one of the taciturn sellers there. It was with this guy that I spotted Atul Gawande’s book which he said would not offer for anything less than a hundred rupees. I hesitated and then finally decided to buy it next Sunday if it happens to be lying around which is certain to be the case. I guess it will be the smart thing to buy Atul Gawande’s first books since I can read both his titles one after the other. I hope next Sunday it will be mine.

THE HUNGRY HYDERABADI

2011-05-03T09:00:00.000+05:30

At any given time, more than three fourths of the motorists clogging the roads of Hyderabad seem to be either going to a hotel to fill up on food or returning from a hotel after getting filled up (to the gills) with food. It is quite easy to tell. Those speeding on the roads without heed to traffic rules going through red lights, going in the wrong direction with the sort of expression on their faces as if the world is coming to an end are those on their way to a hotel. Then those who are drive leisurely with a dreamy, satiated expression on their faces and are those who have had their fodder. Of course, this statistic doesn’t apply to all places in Hyderabad, especially places like Jubilee Hills where almost everyone on the road is either going to a hotel or coming from one. Knowing the JH crowd, they might actually be on their way from one hotel to another. This leads to the conclusion that the number one preoccupation of Hyderabadis of all kinds seem to be Food with a capital F.

There is no better evidence to buttress the above opinion that Hyderabadis are to be found eating all the time than the sheer number of eating joints in Hyderabad. It might be the most lucrative enterprise in the city-providing food. One can get a nice breakfast of idli, dosa etc off a vendor on a bicycle, pushcarts, lunch at corner shops like curry points, Irani hotels etc. Of course, there’s the number of hotels since almost everywhere new hotels are coming up. In Jubilee Hills especially, new eating joints seem to be opening with astonishing regularity, maybe at the rate of one every week. Only last week I read about the inauguration of yet another joint somewhere in Madhapur, which is, by the way, almost conjoined with Jubilee Hills. I read that the ‘Greens Veg Coffee Shop’ opened its doors in Madhapur recently. The only thing I know is that the film star Balakrishna was at the inauguration. I have no idea of what he had there since the papers did not report it but he seemed happy which is what counts.

Being a Hyderabadi myself I am not totally immune to the lure of the best that some of the famous joints in the city have to offer in terms of food. Sometime last week I dropped in at ‘Bawarchi’ Restaurant at the RTC Crossroads with a friend. This joint seems to be more interested in reminding its patrons that it has no branch anywhere in the city. There are notices to that effect everywhere- inside, outside and wherever there is space for a notice. I saw one such notice while waiting for our turn to be called into the dining hall. I haven’t been to many places in Hyderabad where one has to actually wait to be let in. When we reached the hotel there were about five or six people waiting and our turn came after a short wait. But afterwards while we were eating I saw through the glass doors that there was virtually a crowd peering at us hungrily and impatient to get in. Since we had ordered a biryani it did not take us long to finish. As usual, the biryani was good, oil free, aromatic and light on the stomach. I was satisfied with it though I cannot say the same about the dessert. The only dessert Bawarchi seems to offer is ‘Qubani ka Meetha’ so there was no choice for us but to order it. The QKM is supposed to be sweet and sticky but what we got was a liquid version like someone had added water to the syrup in which the pieces of the fruit float. It was a huge let down after the tasty biryani.

The Sunday Super Haul

2011-04-29T08:53:00.005+05:30

Once in a while, I come up with a super haul of more than the usual one of a couple of books mostly by writers I love to read. Last Sunday it was one such occasion when I netted four good books by four equally good writers. One title was a book that I have several copies of but the other three were titles that I haven’t read about before so finding them was quite a thrilling experience. This kind of a super haul happens once in a blue moon so I was filled with joy though the haul did empty my wallet considerably. Even then, what I paid for the four books was far less than what I would have to pay for new copies of these titles assuming bookstores in Hyderabad actually stocked them. I would never have found all four titles anywhere else, leave alone a bookstore, except on the pavements of Abids.

The first find was by the author of one of the very first titles I read just when I was beginning to get seriously into books about places where people are equally crazy about the scene as well as the food (which is something you can’t say about Hyderabad). Peter Mayle is the author who opened my eyes to Provence when I read ‘A Year in Provence’ and ‘Toujours Provence’. ‘Encore Provence’ is what I found lying among other titles on the pavement at Abids. This is perhaps Mayle’s third book on Provence after the previous two titles on the same place. I did not know about ‘Encore Provence’ until I laid my eyes on it so finding the book was the first pleasant surprise of the day. The second surprise of the morning was getting it for only twenty rupees.

Ever since I’ve failed to get into medical college I’ve been more fascinated by surgeons and physicians than anyone or anything else. I’ve met a few of them and also count among doctors I know a cousin, two sisters-in-laws, an uncle and a nephew. The lives of physicians and surgeons fascinate me and I try to read whatever stuff I can find that is written by them. One of my favorite writers, Somerset Maugham is (or was) a student of medicine. So was AJ Cronin whose autobiography lies in my shelf waiting to be opened. Then there is another recent book that I want to read – Siddhartha Mukherjee’s ‘The Emperor of all Maladies’ apart from books by Abraham Varghese that I have not been able to locate anywhere. I’ve come across Atul Gawande’s name quite often though I haven’t really read anything written by him. So when I found his ‘Better- A Surgeon’s Note on Performance,’ I grabbed it. However, I had to bargain hard for it since the guy asked two hundred rupees for it but got only seventy rupees from me. His other book 'Complications:A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science' now gets added to my must read list.

I don’t know if I’m subconsciously waiting to find all books by Haruki Murakami before starting to read them. I have at least five Murakami books waiting to be read right from ‘Kafka on the Shore’ that I found sometime last year to the most recent find ‘The Elephant Vanishes’ that I found two weeks ago. Last week I almost began to read ‘What I Talk When I Talk About Running’ but put it aside after I got Le Carre’s ‘Our Kind of Traitor’ that I am currently reading. As if it wasn’t enough agony waiting to find some time alone to finish the almost half a dozen Murakami books I found another one on Sunday. The third find of the day was Haruki Murakami’s ‘After Dark,’ a short and slim book but which did not come cheap. I had to shell out seventy rupees for it though I felt it would be worth more than that.

Even if I come across a hundred copies of any book by Dave Barry I am going to buy all of them. There are a lot of people who do not know who he is and many more who haven’t even read a single book by him. I want to bring a bit of humor into the lives of such people I know and there’s no better way than to gift them a Dave Barry book. I had come across ‘Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys’ last week but did not buy it because the guy quoted a high price. Finding it still on the pavement on Sunday I asked the seller once again but he quoted the same price as last Sunday. I walked away appearing uninterested though inside I desperately wished he’d agree to my price. But my gambit paid off because the guy came running after me and handed over it to me at the price I asked for- sixty rupees. A book by Dave Barry is worth any price because one cannot find his books in bookstores in Hyderabad. I don’t understand why but no bookstore in Hyderabad seems to stock his books. It is the reason why I have no option to gift only second hand book copies of Dave Barry titles to friends.

AN EARLY SUMMER KICHDI POST

2011-04-26T19:17:00.001+05:30

Memories of Shimla

Around this time last year I was on my way home from Shimla filled with mixed feelings. Sometimes I felt sad and sometimes glad. I felt sad that I was leaving behind such a wonderful place and wondering if I’d ever get another chance to visit the scenic town. I felt glad because I was carrying some wonderful memories of Shimla and of the few good friends I made in the week I was there. The other day I remembered it was the birthday of one such friend who was my roommate at the hostel in Shimla. I called him up to wish him and he seemed glad I had remembered. Next I called up another friend and got some bad news. The friend told me he was just coming out of a depression brought upon by an upheaval in his life. He told me that shortly after he had returned from Shimla he had split with his wife. I felt upset when he told me that they had been married twenty eight years. I wondered how such things could happen to a couple who had been together that long. I wanted to ask him the reason for the split but he was not in a mood to talk. There was nothing I could think of to tell him other than promise to visit him some day soon. But that wasn’t the only tragedy that had happened to someone I had met at Shimla. Another officer from this state who had come along for the training lost her husband in a road accident shortly after the Shimla trip. The last time I saw her was at a traffic junction when she was crossing the road a couple of months ago.

Whatever, I was glad I had made that trip to Shimla though I was not very inclined to go. One of the vivid memories of Shimla is the walk I took at the Ridge early in the morning on the day I was to catch the bus to Delhi. I wish I could go there again for a longer stay and on a personal trip because I want to explore many places I couldn’t go. The entire week that I was there it had been a hectic time what with the day long training sessions leaving only a couple of hours in the evening free. Except for one day I went daily to Shimla from Mashobra and spent a few hours walking around watching people from all over the country and the world going around shopping or just strolling the streets in the chilly evenings. The natty jacket I bought at Shimla is proving to be quite a head turner whenever I happen to wear it to ward off the cold and the rain. I only wish I had bought one more similar jacket.

The Andaman Dream

Another week and it will be the fifth anniversary of the day I set off on my 90 day sojourn in the Andamans. I cannot believe five years have passed since the day I anxiously and nervously stepped into the plane bound for Chennai en route to Port Blair. It was one of the biggest adventures that I had in my life and now I feel really glad I overcame a last minute bout of second thoughts about the whole trip. I almost called it off but somehow I stuck on to my decision and, boy, am I really glad I did it. Though I cannot really say that the three months I spent at the Andamans were the most wonderful days I can claim that almost every day was filled with something new, something that opened my eyes to a lot of things, especially to life on the islands. Apart from a lot of memories of the jungle, the sea and the lonely trips I made to remote and isolated beaches I came back with three more good friends in my life- Eswar, Rahul and Shamik with whom I am in touch even now.

After returning from the Andamans I wished I could somehow find a way to spend a year exploring the islands and write a book called ‘A Year in the Andamans’ but it appears impossible. I would need a lot of money and also lots of courage to break off from the peaceful job and the company of family and friends for such a long time and go live in that beautiful and unforgettable place.

Restless for Sunday

What I am really excited about is that next Sunday happens to be the first Sunday of May and there will be The Literary Review to devour. I am sure there will be something about the Pulitzer Prize winners especially about Siddhartha Mukherjee’s ‘The Emperor of All Maladies’ that I plan to buy some day. It was Sunday yesterday and having missed watching ‘Just Books’ on Saturday evening I caught the program on Sunday night. In the ‘What’s On My Bookshelf’ segment Mrinal Pande showed off her collection of books. Most of the books on her shelves were Hindi books. The only book in her collection that I wish I had was Ryszard Kapuściński’s ‘The Soccer Wars’ that I am still looking for all over.

Four days from now the month-long wait will finally be over.

The Haul and a Book Launch

2011-04-22T10:38:00.004+05:30

Last Saturday turned out to be an eventful day on Hyderabad’s literary scene with not one but two book readings that took place. One was the book reading of Angela Saini’s ‘Geek Nation’ that I learnt about only in the afternoon when I happened to glance at the Times of India. The event was sometime in the afternoon and somewhere in Jubilee Hills so there was no way I could attend it though I very much wanted to. The second book reading was one I accidentally walked into in the evening when I landed up at Landmark at Punjagutta to buy gifts for my nephews. I was quite surprised to see the event in progress with Sunil Sethi and Jyotirmaya Sharma on the dais and a copy of ‘The Big Bookshelf’ displayed on the table. I was a bit annoyed that I missed knowing about the event which doesn’t seem to have been publicized anywhere. What added to the annoyance was the fact that I had come in when the event was just winding up.

There’s no better place to find out rather quickly how dumb some of us Hyderabadis are than at an event like a book launch. One of the reasons why I flee such events right after the actual reading or launch is over is to avoid the inevitable question and answer session that follows. There are invariably a bunch of people who ask the sort of questions that make me cringe. Among the crowd at Landmark on Saturday was one middle-aged gentleman who introduced himself as an artist and wanted to know from Sunil Sethi about the employment opportunities for an artist in the media. This at a book launch! Another person who introduced himself as the culture correspondent of a local newspaper asked Sunil Sethi why there were no language writers featured on ‘Just Books’ that Sethi anchors. Sethi told him that ‘Just Books’ was an English language program. Then there was another person who wanted to know about Anna Hazare and it was at this point that I decided to leave and find a hole to bury myself in. I imagine Sunil Sethi and Jyotirmaya Sharma must have been shaking their heads in utter disbelief at the sort of questions that were asked at Hyderabad.

Incidentally, after leaving the event midway I happened to glance at the latest issue of Outlook magazine elsewhere in the store and came across Jyotirmaya Sharma’s column- Hyderabad Diary- on the last page. He writes that politics, astrology, and cinema were what mattered to Hyderabadis. I think he is wrong. Hyderabadis are interested in individual politicians, not politics, Hyderabadis are crazy about movie stars and not cinema as such. I think he also missed out the fact that there is nothing matters more to the Hyderabadi than eating and drinking. One need only look around to see how many restaurants, hotels, small pushcarts, even vendors on bicycles are there in the city dishing out stuff to the hungry Hyderabadi at all times. Then there’s the drink. He doesn’t seem to have noticed that liquor stores in Hyderabad open as early as hotels. At an hour when people in other cities would be getting ready to have their first cup of tea some of us Hyderabadis would have already downed a couple of pegs. That’s Hyderabad, sir.

The Haul
On Sunday at Abids I did not find any book worth buying. I was looking for books by Ted Lewis. I am certain that I had seen ‘Jack Carter’s Law’ sometime back in a heap of books but I was not lucky. But I am going to find one soon. Since maybe I had my eyes open only for Ted Lewis I did not find other books. However, I found the March 28, 2011 issue of ‘The New Yorker’ magazine that had a story by Haruki Murakami titled ‘UFO in Kushiro’ that I read right after reaching home. I had also seen a collection of short stories by Penelope Lively that I did not feel like buying then but now I wish I had picked it up. That was one (and only) dumb thing I did on Sunday. Maybe I will look for the book next Sunday and pick it up if it is still available.

It wasn’t that I went without books the whole week. I finally lay my hands on John Le Carre’s ‘Our Kind of Traitor’ that one of my brothers gave me. It is what I am planning to read right after I finish another gem that I bought yesterday at a second hand bookstore in Nampally. I am glad I made the impromptu decision to dive into a second hand bookstore yesterday afternoon. After I read Raymond Chandler’s high praise for Dashiell Hammett in ‘The Simple Art of Murder’ I was on the lookout for Hammett’s book. Yesterday I found Dashiell Hammett’s ‘The Continental Op’ and got it for only fifty rupees. The lengthy and wonderful introduction by Steven Marcus about Hammett’s life and the influences on his writing is making me want to start reading the book right away.

There are seven stories in ‘The Continental Op’: The Tenth Clew/The Golden Horseshoe/The House in Turk Street/The Girl with the Silver Eyes/The Whosis Kid/The Main Death/ The Farewell Murder. Though I was a bit disappointed that I had not found any title by Ted Lewis I am glad I found Dashiell Hammett’s ‘The Continental Op.’

Straight from the Saucer- 'I Tea' at Paradise Bakery

2011-04-19T09:30:00.000+05:30

When you work for the government you learn to be simple. In fact, the government life is informed by its simplicity in every thing. Save a greedy and corrupt few, a majority of those who work for the government live a simple life. The clothes are simple, the thoughts are simple, and even the habits and tastes are simple. Naturally, being in the government I am no exception. I try to lead a simple life down to my food habits. A couple of times a week I indulge in what I call my own version of I –Tea or if you prefer, Irani Tea at a nice place like Paradise. Last Friday it was one such day when I was in the mood for I Tea so off I went to Paradise Bakery.

It isn’t a large variety of stuff one gets at Paradise Bakery to snack on but it is mouthwatering enough. There are the four varieties of puffs (egg, mutton, chicken and veg), biscuits (Osmania, Salt, Rota, cashew, Roat etc) and of course, the cakes and pastries. I don’t much fancy this stuff as much as I do the chota samosas which unfortunately almost everyone at Paradise seems to fancy too. Because you don’t get them every day and the day you find them considerable yourself very, very lucky. Last Friday was one such lucky day finding four chota samosas in the shelf. By the time I took out my wallet two of them disappeared. I managed to get the remaining two. I put them in a plate with two salt biscuits and settled down at a table to finish them off before having a cup of the chai.

If an Irani café were to stock only a couple of snacks then it would be Osmania biscuits and chota samosas. So far I haven’t been to any Irani café where I haven’t found chota samosas on the menu. Paradise bakery is no exception. The chota samosa at Paradise is quite a delicacy. One has to taste it once to know how it feels in the mouth. The chota samosas at Paradise are some of the best I have tasted in Hyderabad. It is neither very large nor very small but just large enough to last beyond two bites. I haven’t exactly tried to find out what the filling is so I cannot write here what is inside a chota samosa. The only thing I can identify is onion- small, bits of fried onions. The exterior is crunchy and the chota samosa is best eaten between sips of Irani chai which seems to taste better that way.

Though there are other items on the menu I stick to chota samosas on the days I find them. I find there’s nothing to beat this combination of Chota samosas and chai as the simple man’s ‘I Tea.’

A 'No Haul' Sunday

2011-04-15T09:45:00.000+05:30

After quite some time I had a Sunday when I did not find anything worth buying at Abids. To tell the truth, I was more relieved to come home empty handed than disappointed that I had not found even a single book worth picking up. True, I felt a bit odd returning home with not a single book in the bag but I was also worried if it would be the same again next Sunday. It wasn’t that I did not come across anything at all worth picking up. I saw two latest issues of ‘The New Yorker’ magazine but I was in no mood to buy them. Then there was Bill Bryson’s ‘A Walk in the Woods’ still on the pavement for the eighth or ninth week running. There was something I could have bought- Sagarika Ghose’s ‘The Girl’ and Ananda Mukerji’s ‘And where, My Friend, Lay You Hiding?’ that I saw at Chikkadpally but did not buy because the seller wanted too much for the old books. I was also disappointed that the book sellers were not getting anything new other than what they have been peddling all these weeks.

The Month’s ‘The Literary Review’ in The Hindu

Last Sunday wasn’t the first Sunday of the month but since I had forgotten I am now mentioning about ‘The Literary Review’ that appeared in The Hindu. On the front page was the announcement of the ‘The Hindu Literary Prize’ with June 25th as the deadline and a prize of Rs Five Lakhs. The interview with Gulzar, also on the front page, was a delight to read. To imagine he has been around for almost fifty years working on his poetry and lyrics. It made me feel I should not have stopped learning Urdu. Inside, there was Pradeep Sebastian on Sidharth Choudhury’s ‘Day Scholar’ and praised the book so highly that I am contemplating buying the book and checking it out myself. I haven’t kept up on my promise of reading more books by Indian writers. It makes me feel guilty, very guilty indeed.

Just Books

Ever since the telecast schedule of ‘Just Books’ was changed it has become difficult for me to watch the program on NDTV Profit. Last Sunday I managed to catch it at half past ten in the night. There was Pritish Nandy showing off his books and the only one I liked in his collection was ‘Complete Prose’ by Woody Allen which I do not have with me. Then there was the mandatory author interview, and this week it was with a US based author of another book on India. I wish somebody would tell Sunil Sethi that he speaks more than what his interviewees do. His interruptions are irritating and also so long that appears like Sethi is showing off his own knowledge. One can see the disappointment on the faces of the writers he has interrupted in mid-sentence to say something profound of his own. The poor authors can only nod in agreement as Sunil Sethi goes on and on. I wish he would ask the question and sit back to listen to the author’s answer rather than jump in and make a lengthy point. The program would be much better if he kept his questions short and to the point.

A Food, Coffee, and Wine Post

2011-04-12T13:59:00.002+05:30

Here’s something for those eagerly awaiting news of the latest on the restaurant scene in Jubilee Hills. ‘Bimas’ of Tirupati, I’ve read recently, has opened a branch in Jubilee Hills. From what I know of the Jubilee Hills crowd most likely Bimas was forced to open a branch because they cannot afford to go to Tirupati every time they feel an urge to eat a masala dosa. Whatever, that’s one more eatery for the Jubilee Hills crowd to indulge in as if there aren’t enough places already for them to stuff themselves to the gills. As usual it has caused me some heartburn though not as much as in the past when I read about other posh eateries opening in Jubilee Hills. That is because the report also mentioned that Bimas plans to open another branch in Secunderabad soon, something which already has begun to make my mouth water since Secunderabad is a stone’s throw from Musheerabad where I, fortunately or unfortunately, happen to live.

CCD in MSRD

Musheerabad, by the way, has made its appearance on the Café Coffee Day map with an outlet that has opened sometime in the past without me being aware of such a thing. Until now there was nothing in Musheerabad to have felt proud about unless a jail in the neighborhood counts for such a thing. Now that even the jail has been shifted there was nothing to crow about until CCD decided it was time Musheerabad got another landmark. I haven’t yet been there though I wonder who would drop in at a Café Coffee Day outlet in Musheerabad, of all the places. I doubt it even if the medicos from Gandhi Medical College that’s on the other side of the road drop in there. So far I haven’t felt an urge to drink a seventy five rupee coffee there and when I do I will certainly write about it here.

Talking of Café Coffee Day, the other day I saw a small hoarding advertising the opening of two new CCD outlets. The tone of the ad suggested that now that CCD has opened its outlets in Charminar and Golconda these places would finally be getting some visitors as if there are people in Hyderabad who won’t venture to any place where there are no CCD outlets. There might be such people but they are most likely to be the Jubilee Hills types. They are the sort, when you tell them where you live, don’t mind asking you if there is a CCD outlet in your locality. Luckily, Musheerabad has now one in case anyone from Jubilee Hills decides to venture this far though what business they might have in Musheerabad is something I cannot figure out.

'Wine?'No Thanks

Moving from coffee to a different kind of drink, I read recently somewhere that there was a wine tasting event in the city. Yes, a wine tasting event. Though I have no idea of who attended it I am sure, except a handful, everyone who flocked there must have driven down all the way from Jubilee Hills. Châteaux Bordeaux sounds exactly like the sort of thing that the Jubilee Hills crowd likes to sip, and also be seen holding in their hands at some party hosted by the rich and snotty types who are to be mostly found in places like Jubilee Hills. I’m sure half of that crowd can’t tell a raisin from a grape. The wine tasting event was obviously a marketing gimmick by Sula wines. But sadly, they seemed to have overlooked one little thing. Even if the people are from Jubilee Hills or other equally snooty types they are, after all, Hyderabadis. And no true Hyderabadi, being Irani chai-beer-whisky swilling types, would even bother to touch something like wine even if it is given away free. If there’s another wine-tasting event in Hyderabad, that would be a miracle.

The Sunday Haul- Three Books

2011-04-08T10:13:00.001+05:30

This week’s haul of three books at Abids had a common theme. Since quite a number of years I have been struggling to write a screenplay of a story that I have in mind. Not knowing head or tail of movie screenwriting I managed to do three drafts earlier none of which seemed to make any sense. After a gap of two years I had started on it again as part of ‘Script Frenzy’ month and have been plodding through it slowly wondering how others could write screenplays so easily. In fact even after reading a couple of books on screenwriting and also actual screenplays I am unable to come out with a screenplay.

So it was with movies and screenplays in my mind that I came to Abids on Sunday and the first find turned out to be something totally different and that led to the discovery of a new, exciting author. Two of the books I found later were also related to movies. If one book was a screenplay of a movie made out of a book then the other book was one written by a prominent director. Come to think of it even the third book was made into a movie. Here are the three books:

1. ‘Get Carter’ by Ted Lewis
2. ‘The Arrangement’ by Elia Kazan
3. ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ by Che Guevara

Were it not for some sharp snooping on my part I would have missed this slender, small sized book. ‘Get Carter’ was the first haul of Sunday. It turned out to be a screenplay by Mark Hodges who directed the movie with the same name. I read that ‘Get Carter’ is based on the book ‘Jack’s Return Home’ written by Ted Lewis. When I read the reviews of the movie online I decided that I have to watch the movie somehow. The reviews described it as ‘the best British gangster movie ever made’, ‘landmark movie’, ‘the quintessential British gangster movie’ and so on. Reading so much of praise for the movie I have resolved to find the original book (Jack’s Return Home) and all other books written by Ted Lewis like GBH, Plender, All the Way Through, All the Night Through, The Rabbit, The Mafia Pigeon, Boldt, Bill Rags and Jack Carter’s Law.

‘Get Carter’ was an exciting find and I was thrilled to have stumbled upon it. By the way I got it for only ten rupees. The most thrilling part was that of discovering a new, exciting writer whose books I must, must read more of. I have a feeling that I had seen ‘Jack Carter’s Law’ sometime at Abids but I am not sure. But one thing I am sure is that I am going to keep my eyes peeled for books by Ted Lewis.

I am familiar with the name ‘Elia Kazan’ since I see some of his titles here at Abids though I have not picked up anything by him. But last Sunday when I saw his ‘The Arrangement’ in a heap of books I picked up the book. Later I read the online review (a habit that I developed recently) I found that Elia Kazan was much more than the film director that I thought he was. He is described as one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood. I read that along with Lee Strasburg he introduced ‘method acting’ and is also credited with introducing a lot of new faces in Hollywood. Of course, he has also won a few Oscars so finding the 543-page ‘The Arrangement’ for only ten rupees was another bit of luck this Sunday. His autobiography ‘A Life’ is something I hope to find some day soon.

‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ by Che Guevara was the last book of the haul of Sunday. Curiously, all three books that I picked up on Sunday seem to have movies in common. ‘TMD’ was also made into a movie that seemed to have been a rage. The copy of TMD that I found was an extremely good one that I got for a tenth of the original price of Rs 295 at the back of the Harper Perennial edition was.

I hope after reading all these three books I might be able to do something about my own screenplay!

The Quarterly Reading Report or the Books I Read So Far This Year

2011-04-05T16:18:00.001+05:30

The rate at which I pick up books every week comes nowhere the rate at which I read them. On an average I end up picking up at least three books every week from Abids and second hand bookstores. But when it comes to reading them I manage just one book a week which is something I am not very happy about. There was a time when I could get enough time to go through two or even three books a week especially when I was in the rural postings where I seemed to have all the time in the world. I still manage to read something every day despite my job in the Secretariat here. Here’s the list of the books I have managed to finish reading this year.

‘Up in Honey’s Room’ Elmore Leonard
Somehow I did not enjoy reading this novel by Elmore Leonard. That maybe because I read it over a period of four weeks with long gaps in between. It wasn’t his usual gangster stuff but I will try to read it again.

‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ by Mohammed Hanif
This is one of the books I started the year with and I am glad I bought this book. ACEM is about the killing of Gen Zia in Pakistan. It is one of the funniest books that I read so far after Sidin Vadukut’s ‘Dork.’ It makes me wonder if any Indian writer can write such a story about our leaders and get away with it.

‘Utz’ by Bruce Chatwin
I love to read stuff by Bruce Chatwin and ‘In Patagonia’ is one book that will stay with me for long. Unfortunately, ‘Utz’ is fiction, it is way too short and I did not enjoy reading this book though there are some good lines in it. I have ‘Viceroy of Ouidah’ and ‘Songlines’ on the shelf waiting to be read.

‘If It Is Sweet’ by Mridula Koshy
Some of the stories are way too different but Koshy is one good writer. I enjoyed reading all the short and not so short stories in this collection.

‘Global Soul’ by Pico Iyer
I read more than half of this book sitting in Hotel Panchsheel near Ravindra Bharati while I was attending the Legislative Council in Feb-March. I would hurry out whenever the House was adjourned and spend a happy half hour lost in Pico Iyer’s prose and wishing it would never end. One of the best reads so far.

‘Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This is another short book and wonderfully written by Marquez. I finished this book in one sitting mesmerized by the writing and also the tale.

‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ by Mohsin Hamid
I still feel stupid for reading this book more than a year after buying it. After I finished reading this book I wondered why I had not started reading it right after buying it. It is a beautifully written book with a very different narrative style. It made me eager to read Mohsin Hamid’s first book that I got from a friend.

‘Moth Smoke’ by Mohsin Hamid
I did not read this right after finishing ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ because I wanted to savor the feeling that the book left in me. ‘Moth Smoke’ is another wonderful book written in a unique narrative style. I enjoyed reading this book.

‘One L’ by Scott Turow
What’s common between Scott Turow and Mohsin Hamid? Both studied at Harvard Law School. ‘One L’ is a kind of journal Scott Turow kept while he was at Harvard Law School sometime in the seventies. There is a lot of stuff about American law that is a bit difficult. The descriptions of the time they had to prepare for the tests and the campus atmosphere are quite good. I had thought there’d be something about how Turow came into writing but it wasn’t so. But it made me think I should have studied law myself.

‘Diamond Dust’ by Anita Desai
This is another collection of short stories that I read this year after Mridula Koshy’s ‘If It is Sweet.’ All the stories in Diamond Dust are little gems that reveal Anita Desai’s mastery of language and her insights into human behavior.

‘White Album’ by Joan Didion
I had found WA very long ago and somehow did not feel like reading it until I found the right time. But after I found ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ a couple of months ago I thought I should begin reading WA first. It is a collection of her essays on varied topics that reveal her sharp journalistic mind. The collection dazzles with her insights into some momentous events, famous people and places.

‘Istanbul’ by Orhan Pamuk
I haven’t yet finished reading this wonderful book on Istanbul. More than his love for Istanbul and its history, what is obvious is the staggering amount of research that Orhan Pamuk put into writing this book. Everything is so lovingly described that I wonder if I will ever get to visit Istanbul in my lifetime and get to see the Bosporus. This book, coincidentally, is a gift from my brother who visits Istanbul so frequently that it makes me madly jealous of him. But I am glad he presented me with his beautiful book.

The Double Haul of Four Books

2011-04-01T09:00:00.000+05:30

The Mid Week Find

Though I find many good books during my Sunday hunts on the pavements of Abids, the place I find the really good books are the second hand bookstores of Hyderabad. If every Sunday I hunt at Abids at least once a week I make it a point to drop in at least one of the more than half a dozen secondhand bookstores of Hyderabad whenever I get the time. Last Thursday the Legislative Council where I was assigned on duty adjourned quite early. It left with some time so I decided to pay a visit to Best Books at Lakdikapul which was the nearest second hand bookstore. While checking out the books in the first floor of the store I spotted a book I knew I had to buy right away.

The book was Haruki Murakami’s ‘The Elephant Vanishes’, a collection of his short stories. A hundred and twenty five rupees is a lot of money to pay for a secondhand book but a Murakami title is worth perhaps more so I bought it almost grateful for coming across it. There are seventeen short stories in TVE beginning with The Windup Bird and Tuesday’s Women, The Second Bakery Attack, The Kangaroo Communiqué, On Seeing the 100 % Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning, Sleep, The Fall of the Roman Empire; The 1881 Indian Uprising; Hitler’s Invasion of Poland; and the Realm of Raging Winds, Lederhosen, Barn Burning, The Little Green Monster, Family Affiair, A Window, TV People, A Slow Boat to China, The Dancing Dwarf, the Last Lawn of the Afternoon, The Silence, and finally, The Elephant Vanishes, in the end. Till now I had read only one collection of Murakami’s stories titled ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’ and nothing else by this acclaimed author though I have ‘Kafka on the Shore,’ ‘The Wind Up Bird Chronicle,’ ‘Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World’ that I am saving to read some other time.. My last Murakami find was ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’ sometime in August last year. ‘

The Haul on Sunday

On Sunday the first book I found at Abids was one that I thought I had lost as I couldn’t find it after first spotting it two Sundays ago and failing to buy it. But Tobias Wolff’s memoir ‘This Boy’s Life’ was still with the same seller. I was relieved it wasn’t picked up by anyone. At only ten rupees the 288-pages book was a real steal. ‘This Boy’s Life’ is another addition to a long list of autobiographies/memoirs by writers I am gathering in my collection that I plan to list out in a separate post sometime in the future.

Though I have only heard of Tobias Wolff but never got to read any of his books I guess his memoir is a good place to get an idea about his writing and what shaped it. According to the reviews on the net TBL is described as a searing and honest account of his growing up years in the company of his single mother. I’m glad I bought this book but I am really looking forward to finding his other books- especially ‘In Pharaoh’s Army’ which is an account of the time he spent reporting the war in Vietnam.

I also saw Sarita Mandanna’s ‘Tiger Hills’ that I also had assumed was bought by a big second hand book seller but it wasn’t. However, the sheer size of the book and its condition made me decide not to buy it and I walked away. Which was a good thing I did because the next find was Milan Kundera’s ‘Life is Elsewhere’ that I wouldn’t have bought had I picked up ‘Tiger Hills’ because I wouldn’t have had the fifty rupees to pay for it. Milan Kundera is another writer I haven’t yet started reading though now I have two of his books the first one being ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ that I bought a couple of months back.

The third find of the day presented me with a tough choice. Stephen Fry’s ‘Paper Weight’ was one of my lucky finds a long time back, maybe a decade or more ago. It was one of the funniest collection of humor pieces I had ever read till then. I greatly enjoyed the book that I had then bought for only fifteen rupees. So when I found ‘Stephen Fry in America’ I couldn’t leave without buying it. The book was a sort of travelogue and had pictures in it which was a bit unusual. The book was brand new but some of the pages were slightly stained but that did not prevent the seller from asking two hundred rupees for it. I bargained successfully and got it for half that amount. Later I wondered if I had overpaid for the book but it is very unlikely that I would find the book so it justified the hundred rupees I spent on it.

Bill Bryson’s ‘Walk in the Woods’ was still on the pavements even after two months of spotting it first. I had thought I’d buy it this Sunday but with the midweek’s find and the three book haul on Sunday left me with no option but to leave it until next Sunday

The 'Cha Bar' in the OBS @ The Park Hotel

2011-03-29T09:00:00.002+05:30

Where in this part of the world would you go, if you had the sudden urge, to have a cup of Ladakhi cha? Or a cup of Kashmiri kawa? Or Japanese Macha? Or Malaysian teh tarik? The answer is, Hyderabad. In a city where Irani chai reigns supreme you’d be surprised there is a place which serves Arabic spice tea, Moroccan mint tea, Russian caravan tea, South African rooibos, Thai lemongrass tea and more than a hundred other varieties of tea and coffee. Those who had been to the ‘cha bar’ in Oxford Book Stores across the country would know what I am talking about. I had been to one such store in Hyderabad sometime last week. One on my visits to Delhi I had been to the OBS somewhere near Janpath and had a cup of masala chai which made me very good which is not something that usually happens whenever I am in Delhi. I had then thought how nice it would be if someone had the bright idea of opening an OBS in apna Hyderabad.

Quite miraculously, not long after I had that thought, an OBS opened right in Hyderabad on the busy Road No. 1 of Banjara Hills. I dropped in there once soon after and checked out not only the place but also the tea. I wasn’t impressed with the store because of its location and also its size. I felt it was way too small and I did not go there again. I had then wished that OBS were a bit larger and more swish. I was quite taken aback, about a few months ago, when I read somewhere that another OBS had opened at the Park Hotel. Though I did not go there right away sometime in January I happened to drop in at the Park OBS for a book reading and came away sufficiently impressed to tell myself that I’d drop in for a detailed survey very soon. Last week I got the time to pay a visit to the OBS.

It is a pity to see a large bookstore, the kind Hyderabad hasn’t seen before, with not a single soul in it. I was the only customer in the store at the time of the hour, around half past six in the evening, me and about half a dozen sales assistants hovering around. I browsed around for a while and hoped someone would drop in because I was on the verge of creating a world record for being the only customer in a large bookstore for the longest time. I was wondering if I too should make a quiet exit and let the sales assistants relax when somebody walked in. Two people sauntered in and I knew right away that they weren’t the book buying sorts and not very soon I was proved right. I overheard one of them asking the sales guys if the store stocked Intermediate text books. Only in Hyderabad can we find people whose idea of a bookstore is of a place where one buys school and college textbooks. I felt like walking up to the guy and taking a close look at his face. But he walked out even before I could get anywhere near him. He certainly seemed to be the sort of guy who would no doubt go home and tell his family and half the people in his neighborhood that he had recently walked into a big bookstore in a big hotel that did not stock Intermediate textbooks as if he had made a major archaeological discovery.

But the fact was, forget textbooks, it did not have what I wanted. ‘Tinkle’ magazine? I asked. No. Orhan Pamuk’s ‘The Naïve and Sentimental Novelist? No. ‘Outlook’ magazine? No. Even the OBS tee shirts they had stocked were of one size only- Large. I suppose they expect all their Hyderabadi customers to be of that size. No wonder there weren’t many customers in that store. Since I lost all interest in buying anything at OBS I decided to check out the ‘cha bar’ and got the surprise of my life when I took a glance at the menu.

The menu of the ‘cha bar’ at OBS listed no less than 119 (yes, one hundred and nineteen) varieties of tea and coffee. There was the standard Masala chai, the South Indian coffee, and something called the ‘Sau Meel ka Cha’ (100 Mile Tea) that the menu helpfully told me was what truck drivers had on their long trips. Since I had not driven to OBS in a truck I settled for the standard Masala chai. I was also intrigued to read that cha bar also offers teas from Darjeeling (Malkaibari, Gold) Nilgiris (Tiger Hill, Craigmore, non such), Kangra, Sikkim, Nepal and tea margaritas, dessert teas, Ceylon tea, green tea, Oolong, Chinese (Lapsang souchong, song lou etc), herbal teas, ayurvedic tea and even ‘mother and child’ tea, coffees, assorted snacks and so many other varieties of tea that it would take me two years to sample all those teas even if I managed to drop in once a week. I discovered that the masala chai served in a glass tumbler in a quaint holder just like the one I had at the Delhi cha bar, was really good and worth the thirty bucks I had to shell out for it.

It felt really nice to know that at last there was a place in Hyderabad I could come to if I was bored of Irani chai. It struck me that cha bar did not offer Irani chai. But it is all wasted on Hyderabadis because for us Hyderabadis there is nothing like a cup of Irani chai to make others on the road nervous with our driving skills. Also, not many would be bothered to drive down all the way to the Park Hotel which is in Somajiguda (near the Necklace Road MMTS station to be exact) to sample the varieties of teas and coffees. The Park and the OBS opened sometime November last I guess, that is six months ago but still probably doesn’t get more than a couple of visitors a day which is a real pity because OBS is a nice joint. For a change I wish the Park had opened somewhere in Jubilee Hills where the crowd would have done justice to it