How It All Began

In the early years I wasn’t such a regular visitor to the Abids Sunday second hand book market. I went occasionally when I was in town because I was posted in a place quite far away from Hyderabad. In those days I used to come home only during the weekends. With just one day- Sunday- of holiday I just couldn’t find the time to go to Abids as I had to catch up with friends, get the laundry done, run other errands and not to mention, get some rest after a week’s hectic work.

Also, I did not buy books at Abids with the intention of starting a collection. I bought the books only to read them. So I bought only those books I thought might be an interesting read. I do not remember many of the titles I bought in those early years. Later I came to know about le Carre, Len Deighton, Bill Bryson, Dave Barry and began to look for their titles. I would come across many books by Indian writers but at that time I foolishly believed that their books were no good so I did not buy many books by Indian writers. Much, much later after it dawned on me that Indian authors writing in English were good, and after I began to read the reviews in LR I began to buy such titles like ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy, ‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie and so on.

Pradeep Sebastian, the bibliomane as he would like to refer to himself, columnist and author of ‘The Groaning Shelf,’ and one of my favourite books is my chief inspiration. It is through reading his column in The Hindu’s ‘Literary Review’ that I came to know about several wonderful writers and books that I would otherwise have not known. I used to cut out his columns and preserve them and in fact I still have a few cuttings including the one where he wrote about Bill Bryson. It was in his columns also that I first read about Anne Fadiman’s ‘Ex-libris’ that I was lucky enough to find almost a decade after first reading about it. ‘The Groaning Shelf’ by Pradeep Sebastian is perhaps the first book on books in India. It is a collection of his various columns where he talks about books, printing, type and so on. I love TGS so much that I have snapped almost every copy of TGS that I have come across. I have two brand new copies and also three second hand copies that I have found at various times.

So far I must have bought a few thousand books in the almost three decades that I've been collecting books. I am 57 now and I have no idea how many more books I will buy.

Summer of '42 by Herman Raucher

Decades ago when I was in my early twenties and in a Harold Robbins-Sidney Sheldon-Robert Ludlum-Alistair Maclean phase a friend gave me a copy of ‘Summer of '42’ by Herman Raucher. It remained unread for nearly a decade and half because I thought it wouldn’t be so interesting whatever my friend might have told me. When I finally read it, (why, I don’t know) I realized how incredibly stupid I had been to have not read that gem of a book for so long. But having read it I experienced a strange tender feeling that overcomes me whenever I happen to see the cover of the book. It takes its place in a separate shelf I have filled with my favorite titles that I treasure and never let go out of my sight.

For several years it was the only copy I had. My friend did not ask for it, and I did not want to return it to her. I found a second copy at Abids that had the same cover. I do not remember now when I found this second copy. But sometime in July of 2010 I found my third copy of this classic. This too had the same cover and I got it for just twenty rupees.

Over the years I reread ‘Summer of '42’ several times, and I reread it only recently a couple of months back and experienced the same feelings I had when I read it the first time decades back.

The Lockdown Reads

When I first heard about the lockdown my first reaction was of shock and disbelief. The first thing i thought was that i wouldn't be able to go to Abids for more than three Sundays to look for books. The next thought was how could anyone stay at home for so long without going mad. But soon I realized that it was exactly the sort of break every bibliophile dreams about- hours and hours to read and read. I picked up the first book I spotted on my shelf- I Dreamed of Africa by Kuki Gallmann. It was a wonderful account of the author’s life in Kenya and of course there are some gut-wrenching incidents that brought tears to my eyes. She loses her husband in an accident and her son to a snake bite. In it I read about some people she met who helped her and were doing wonderful work in wildlife conservation in that beautiful country. I finished the book in a day and half.

Apart from reading another thing I resolved to do during the lockdown was to sort my bookshelves and rearrange all the books. After one spell of sorting I found the copy of ‘Nine Faces of Kenya’ by Elspeth Huxley that I had bought some time back. I wanted to read it since it was about Kenya that I had just read about in ‘I Dreamed of Africa’ and in the first few pages itself I came across the same persons and places that Kuki Gallman wrote about – Richard Leakey and also places like Naivasha.

In another pile I saw the copy of ‘A Devil’s Chaplain’ by Richard Dawkins that I had kept aside a long time back to read but had forgotten. Idly I looked at the contents page and saw that some of the essays were about Africa. When I read the essays I was quite surprised to find the names of Richard Leakey, and also , Iain Douglas-Hamilton that I had read about in ‘I Dreamed of Africa’ by Kuki Gallmann. The surprise was because I had come across them so soon after reading them first.

The Sunday Haul (on 15-03-2020)

The previous Sunday I had missed my trip to the Abids book bazaar as I was travelling and not in town. I was counting the days for the next Sunday. But on Saturday which was a government holiday because it was the second Saturday of the month I went out for a routine I follow on Saturdays. At a newspaper vendor in Lakdikapul I buy ‘Mint’, ‘Business Line’ and ‘Business Standard’ for the Saturday supplements that I go through over a cup of chai in an Irani that is right beside the vendor’s. Afterwards I walked over to a second hand bookseller who spreads out a few books on the pavement. There I saw a copy of ‘If I Should Die Before I Wake’ by Michelle Morris that I bought.

On the next day, Sunday, I was at Abids. Around a decade ago, I guess, I found a nice copy of ‘Paro: Dreams of Passion’ by Namita Gokhale that I read soon after. I was glad I found it because reading it convinced me that wonderful stories have been written by women writers in the seventies. Last Sunday I found another copy of the same title but the copy I found was a hardcover one, with the jacket and the cover was worth every rupee of the hundred rupees I paid for it. The other thing was that it seemed to be a first edition and published in 1984 by Chatto & Windus, The Hogarth Press, London. On the back was a black and white photograph of the author.

I am aware that there are some very good writers writing wonderful books in regional languages and I am also amazed at how so few of them are translated into other languages especially English. It isn’t always possible to get books by such writers in the original language even if you are aware of the writer. There are many writers you don't know anything about- not their names and not even titles of their books. I always try to buy translated works if I cannot find them in the original language if they are in Telugu or Hindi, two languages I can read and write. Last Sunday at Abids I came across a book with an attractive cover. It had all the appearance of those books that were published by Indian publishing houses in the seventies. The title on the cover said ‘Against Myself and Other Stories’ by Rajee Seth. It was a slim volume of just eighty two pages containing eleven short stories written by Rajee Seth and translated into English by Jasjit Purewal.

On the way home at Chikkadpally at one of the sellers I saw a stack of books that I sifted through and found two titles worth picking up. I am embarrassed to confess that I haven’t read ‘Dr Zhivago’ by Boris Pasternak so far except for a few short stories. I found a copy of ‘Safe Conduct’ by Boris Pasternak that has ‘an autobiography, poems, and short stories’ as it says on the cover. ‘Safe Conduct’ is the autobiography, Aerial Ways, Letters from Tula, and The Childhood of Luvers are the three short stories in it as well as more than thirty poems.

I had found few titles of James Baldwin though I am yet to read them. In the same stack where I found ‘Safe Conduct’ by Boris Pasternak I found a copy of ‘Nobody Knows My Name’ by James Baldwin. It is a collection of his essays published in various places. I got these two books for only twenty five rupees each. I was glad that the Sunday at Abids yielded a good haul.

Travel Diaries- Kolhapur

Last Sunday I traveled to Kolhapur with the spouse in tow. Here are some of the vignettes from that two day trip. It was the second time I saw the pigeons right inside the terminal at the RGIA in Hyderabad, and one of them sat down on the table as if waiting for breakfast.

The view from one of the fortifications in Panhala was fantastic, with the view stretching to scores of miles ahead.

Some bare trees on a winding road.

The spouse was doing some last minute shopping and I noticed a doorway.

We reached the Rankala lake just as the sun was setting.

Of course I tasted the famed Kolhapur mutton curry and also Tambda rassa. The airport at Kolhapur is small but neat. The people were friendly in the town and no one seemed in a hurry to get anywhere. I had fantasies of living there. This is the view outside the hotel where we stayed.

The Sunday Haul (on 01-03-2020)

My kid joined a software company recently. Though I never tried to understand or know what he studied in college I felt it would a good idea to get to know something about software after I saw a copy of ‘Dreaming in Code’ by Scott Rosenberg. I have already started reading it and just got to know about source code, compilers, and such jargon. I don’t know of what use it would be to me to read this book but then I read all kinds of books in the belief there’s something to learn from every book.

I remember writing down the name Cesare Pavese a long time ago in a notebook after reading about the writer someplace I don’t remember now. It was a name difficult to forget because I had not heard of it before. So when I saw the name again on the cover of a book I saw at Abids I picked it up for a closer look and then bought it. It was a beautiful copy of ‘The Devil in the Hills’ by Cesare Pavese. The cover reminded me of a title by Jean Giono.

Sometimes it is difficult to remember all the names of writers who’ve either won literary prizes/awards or on the short list but a name like Laszlo Krasnahorkai is difficult to forget. The third title I found at Abids was a copy of ‘Satantango’ by Laszlo Krasnahorkai.

The fourth book in the haul I found at Chikkadpally. I remember reading about ‘Death in Venice’ by Thomas Mann somewhere that I cannot recollect now. I had bought not one but two copies of ‘The Magic Mountain’ by Thomas Mann but was looking for his ‘Death in Venice’ that I found last Sunday. I paid only thirty rupees for it.

The Sunday Haul (on 23-02-2020)

Those who read, I realized, have few friends and those friends are mostly people who also read. There was someone in the office who loved to read and her birthday was coming up so I wanted to give her a book. I had told her about Alice Munro and also about William Trevor. While I had an extra copy of an Alice Munro title I did not have extra copies of any of the half a dozen William Trevor titles I have on my bookshelf. So I decided to go in search of a book to give her. It was a holiday due to a local festival and I decided to drop in at MR Books at Begumpet. I couldn’t find anything worth giving to her but I found something for myself. I found a beautiful copy of ‘Bookworm’ by Lucy Mangan. I had written down this title in my notebook after I read about it on someone’s blog. I felt very pleased finding this title that happened to be about books.

That was on Friday and on Sunday I was at Abids where I found two more titles. However, these were copies of books I already have. I found a nice copy of ‘Prashad: Cooking with Indian Masters’ by Inder Singh Kalra that I got for a hundred rupees. I bought it because the copy I had with me wasn’t in such a good condition.

The next find was a copy of ‘The Story of Lucy Gault’ by William Trevor. It would make a nice gift for the colleague in office so I bought it. I got it for eighty rupees which was very less for a book in such a beautiful condition that it appeared almost new.

The Sunday Haul (on 16-02-2020)

The previous Sunday I had been to Abids only for a brief while, long enough to share a cup of tea and have a brief talk with Jai who dropped in. I left without a glance at the books since I had to return home to see off my mother leaving for Delhi. So last Sunday it felt like I had not been to Abids after ages even though it was only a week. The weather on Sunday looked like it was already summer. It was uncomfortably warm in the open sun and I had the sense to bring along a cap. Once I began to look at the books I forgot all about the weather and focused on the titles on display. I managed to find three books in all, two at Abids and the third at Chikkadpally.

I have quite a few copies of short story collections by many writers- Alice Munro, Alistair Macleod, William Trevor, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Somerset Maugham, Raymond Carverand also several anthologies. Only the previous month and also at the Hyderabad Book Fair recently I picked up more than a couple of short story collections. There are some writers like AE Coppard, Sean O’ Faolain whose short stories I haven’t had the fortune of finding anywhere, and when I saw their stories in a copy of ‘The Oxford Book of Short Stories Selected by VS Pritchett’ I took it. There are altogether forty one stories in this book.

I have exactly four years before I retire. I am getting drawn towards articles dealing with retirement and in many of such articles I read the common thread is that one has to prepare for it. I’ve realized that I haven’t prepared for it and that I have only four years to do it. There isn’t much that I have saved and I don’t even own a flat or any kind of dwelling. Since I have only four years to prepare for retirement I want to learn as much as I can about retirement and what to do about it. The thought of retiring is slightly scary but at the same time it promises to be liberating. In the hope that I might find something useful I picked up a nice copy of ‘Retired but Not Tired’ by BK Trehan and Indu Trehan.

There are books that have irresistible cover pages and some have illustrations inside that are too beautiful to ignore and if any book has any of these I buy it even if the subject is something I am not very interested in. Last Sunday at Chikkadpally a seller had a set of four volumes, two with colourful jackets and two without. The two volumes with jackets were a copy of ‘The Ramayana’ Text by Lakshmi Lal Illustrated by Badri Narayan, and another –Worship of Shiva and both said on the cover that the illustrations inside were by Badri Narayan. Now I know enough of art that Badri Narayan was a famous name and decided to take a look at one of the books. The illustrations inside were so beautiful that I wanted to buy both the volumes. In the end I decided to buy the copy of ‘The Ramayana’ Text by Lakshmi Lal Illustrated by Badri Narayan that had the cover more or less intact. I got it for hundred rupees only.

The Super Haul at Bengaluru

For the past several months I’ve been dreaming of traveling to Bengaluru and look in at the nearly half a dozen secondhand bookstores on Church Street, including the venerable Blossoms. I nearly went there in the first week of January when an opportunity came up to participate in a workshop but I had to drop the idea as I was busy with a course I was handling. However, last week I got the chance finally. My son was joining at his first job in a company in Bengaluru and on the pretext of accompanying him I too went. I spent a whole day trawling the bookstores and ended up buying nine wonderful titles.

I had a couple of hours free on Sunday evening so I went the new Blossoms on Church Street. All through the days leading up to the trip to Bengaluru I had been waiting for the moment I would step into this store. So when I entered I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of books available. It would take me a day to check out all the books so I tried to do a rapid scan as fast as I could. Sometime back, I forget where, I had read about Adam Diment, a name I heard for the first time. As is my habit I noted it down and also remembered it. So the first book I spotted at Blossoms was an old copy of ‘The Bang Bang Birds’ by Adam Diment. I felt ecstatic because I saw that the price was only seventy rupees. When I had checked online for books by Adam Diment after I heard about him, I was shocked to find the only book available was for something like 1800 rupees. So that explains the ecstasy.

I was even more ecstatic when I spotted a nice copy of ‘Imperium’ by Ryszard Kapuscinski next. I grabbed it, needless to say. This was one title I was looking around for since a long time. One get to find such great books at Blossoms that I have decided to make at least one trip every year to Bengaluru and buy all the books I want.

Finding the next book was enough justification to break my resolution of not buying more than two books as I felt there were simply too many books lying at home. I gave myself many excuses chief of which was that my birthday was just a couple of days away and I need to buy gifts for myself and there’s nothing better than a book to gift myself. So with that excuse I added the copy of ‘Patrick White Speaks’ by Patrick White, to my haul.

The next day, free of all chores, I decided to spend the whole day looking into the other bookstores on Church Street. I started off the day’s search with Select Book Shop. There I found a nice copy of ‘Time Bites’ by Doris Lessing. Since I couldn’t find anything else interesting I went upstairs where I met the venerable KK Murthy who told me to look around. So when I looked around I found a newish copy of ‘The Art of Travel’ by Alain de Botton. But it didn’t come cheap at 550 rupees.

After Select it was the turn of Bookworm. The person said they had a copy of ‘The War Doctor’ by David Nott that I read about somewhere. I took a break for lunch when they told me they would search for it. When I returned I was disappointed to learn that they did not have it. But I found another interesting title-‘An Anthology of Indo-English Poetry’ edited by Gauri Deshpande. There was no year of publication anywhere in the book so I am guessing it must have been published sometime in the early seventies.

There were poems by poets I knew and some I did not know about. The poets featured in it: Nissim Ezekiel, Kamala Das, R.Parthasarathy, K.N. Daruwala, K.D. Katrak, Gauri Deshpande, Rakshat Puri, Gieve Patel, Adil Jussawala, Mamta Kalia, Saleem Peeradina, Jayanta Mahapatra, Pritish Nandy, and Pria Karunakar.

It was almost half past five and my train was at eight in the evening. I did not have much time and decided to look in Bookhive that I had not been on my earlier visit sometime in 2013. In Bookhive I ended up finding three wonderful titles. The first find was a nice copy of ‘Friend of My Youth’ by Alice Munro. It had the sort of plastic jacket that libraries put on the books and when I looked inside I was not surprised to read that it was a discarded copy from Leicester City Libraries.

These are the stories in ‘Friend of My Youth’- Friend of My Youth, Five Points, Meneseteun, Hold Me Fast, Don’t Let Me Pass; Oranges and Apples; Pictures of the Ice; Goodness and Mercy; Oh, What Avails; Differently; and Wigtime.

I came to know about Jane Harper recently after I read about her ‘The Lost Man’ and ‘The Dry’ somewhere, naturally, online. I had noted down the titles and had no hopes of finding them in the near future. In Bookhive which was my next stop, I spotted a copy of ‘The Dry’ and was impressed by the blurbs and it also helped that the writer was an Australian so in it went into my haul.

The last find was the icing on the cake, a real treasure. I spotted a beautiful copy of ‘The Soccer War’ by Ryszard Kapuscinski. This was another title that I had been looking for. So with nine books in the haul and many more I wished I could buy I bade good bye to beautiful Bengaluru.

The Sunday Haul/ The Republic Day Haul (on 26-01-2020)

A few years back I had chanced upon a copy of Alistair MacLeod’s ‘The Lost Salt Gift of Blood’ at Abids one Sunday. Only a few days before I had picked up a copy of ‘Islands’ by the same author and finding the second book was a lucky thing especially since I had got it for only ten rupees. Much later I read ‘Islands’ and realized I had found a wonderful writer. Last Sunday at the same seller where I had found ‘The Lost Salt Gift of Blood’ I found another collection of short stories. It was a copy of ‘Man Descending’ by Guy Vanderhaeghe that I would have not bought had I not seen the blurb by Alice Munro-‘These stories are wonderful.’

These are the stories in this slim and small book:
The Watcher/Reunion/How the Story Ends/What I Learned from Caesar/Drummer/Cages/Going to Russia/A Taste for Perfection/The Expatriates’ Party/Dancing Bear/Man Descending/ Sam, Soren, and Ed.

One of the things that makes/made me go to the Abids Sunday book bazaar is the joy of finding new books, new authors and I’ve never been disappointed. Every Sunday I come home with some wonderful titles by great writers that fill me with indescribable joy. Last Sunday I spotted a book that had an attractive cover. Intrigued by the colourful cover I took a closer look at the hefty copy of ‘Footsteps’ by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. It was the third title in a quartet called the ‘Buru Quartet’ and according to what I read online about the author and his books, it is something unique. However, I was also disappointed that I had no idea if I would find the other three titles of the Buru Quartet. Sometime back I had found a copy of ‘The Climax of an Empire’ by Jan Morris, and a title in ‘The Pax Britannica’ trilogy. Till date I haven’t found the other two titles in the trilogy, and don’t expect to find them. Instead of waiting to find them I think it would be a good idea to get them online which is what I plan to do.

However, I was thrilled that I could find something from Indonesia, a country whose literature I am not familiar with. Another small thing that had me more thrilled was that I share my birthday with Pramaoedya Ananta Toer though the year is different.