The Sunday Haul (on 05-10-2025)

 

Somewhere I have jotted down a list of authors whose books I have not been able to find anywhere. It included Clarice Lispector, Jon Fosse, and also Halldor Laxness. Last Sunday at Abids I spotted a title that filled me with the kind of joy that I had not felt since a long time. I found a copy of Halldor Laxness’ ‘Independent People’ on the pavement amidst a few books strewn around. I couldn’t believe it at first but when I took out the book I realized it was indeed a Halldor Laxness title. It was a brand new copy and I wondered how it got there. I paid only a hundred rupees for it.

Actually I thought the Abids trip wouldn’t come out as it started to rain very heavily early in the morning and continued. I had almost given up the idea of going to Abids but miraculously the rain stopped around ten in the morning. I then set out after breakfast and took the bus to Chikkadpally where I couldn’t find anything though I had seen a title I thought I would buy the following Sunday.

But before I found the Halldor Laxness title I found another wonderful title, a travel title, a genre I love to read. This title was like a buffet meal with thirty-five essays by well-known travel writers, and the book I found was a hardcover copy of ‘The Penguin Book of Indian Journeys’ edited by Dom Moraes. Most of the essays in this collection are by travel writers whose books I have already found and also read. Some of them include Anita Nair, Alexander Frater (Chasing the Monsoon), James Cameron (Indian Summer), P. Sainath (Everybody Loves a Good Drought), Paul Theroux, V.S. Naipaul, Anees Jung and a few writers I did not know before I found this collection. I have no idea about Joe Roberts, Dawood Ali McCalum, and also Jonah Blank. Somehow there were notable omissions like Pankaj Mishra (Butter Chicken in Ludhiana), Pico Iyer, Dervla Murphy, and also Elizabeth Bumillier (May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons). I don’t know if these writers had published their books after 2001 when ‘The Penguin Book of Indian Journeys’ was published.

The book had looked familiar when I first spotted it and though I had a feeling that I have a copy of this book I bought it. Later when I sorted through my books at another place where I keep my books, I saw a copy of ‘The Penguin Book of Indian Journeys’ that I do not remember when and where I had bought it. But this copy was in a better condition than the one I bought last Sunday.

The Sunday Haul (on 28-09-2025)

 

It had been raining incessantly in Hyderabad all of last week and it looked like it would rain on Sunday also. But miraculously it did not rain though the sky was cloudy almost all day. As usual I started out after breakfast and first stop was at Chikkadpally. I saw a nice copy of ‘If On a Winter’s Night A Traveller’ by Italo Calvino but I did not buy it as I had a copy at home. Disappointed with the fare at Chikkadpally I went to Abids. 

It is the festival season with Dasara only a few days away when the regular shops are open on Sunday also which meant that some of the second-hand booksellers were not at their usual spots. That and the fact that there was the possibility of rain also kept some more sellers away from Abids. However, there were a few sellers like those in front of GPO and those in the lanes. With one of the sellers before GPO I found a copy of ‘Difficult Loves and Other Stories’ by Italo Calvino that I had seen the previous Sunday but had not bought. I got this collection of four stories for a hundred rupees. I read on the back cover that the collection includes three of his best-known stories- ‘Smog’, ‘A Plunge into Real Estate’, and ‘The Argentine Ant’ that is described as ‘most terrifying and memorable of all’. I have to read these stories one by one soon.

The next find also happened to be a collection of short stories. I spotted a copy of ‘Short Stories by New Zealanders’ edited by Phoebe C. Meikle, that looked like a text book because it had notes and questions. There were stories by Frank Sargeson, Dan Davin, A.P. Gaskell, and Maurice Duggan, all writers of the past. I got it for fifty rupees only. 

The Sunday Haul (on 21-09-2025)

Just recovering from a severe sinus infection and feeling rather weak I had decided to skip Abids and rest at home but I changed my plans after Hari called to say he was coming to Abids. It was a bright and sunny morning last Sunday in Hyderabad, and the forecast for the next week was that it would rain during the weekend from 25^th due to a Deep Depression since it looked likely that it would rain the coming Sunday also. So I decided to make hay while the sun shines and started off by skipping the sellers at Chikkadpally and heading straight to Abids where my friend was waiting. 

On the way to meet him I saw a copy of a book with such an attractive cover that I instantly picked it up. It was a beautiful copy of ‘Ancient Tales & Folklore of China’ by Edward T.C. Werner, a subject that I am very interested in so I bought it right away. I got it for a hundred rupees. 

The next find was a copy of ‘When We Were Orphans’ by Kazuo Ishiguro with a small portion of the cover and the pages below torn off but that did not deter me from buying it. It was a faber & faber first edition, and I had also not read this Ishiguro novel so in it went into the haul. 

Later I sat with Hari in the Bench café in one of the side lanes and talked over omelette, bun maska, and ginger chai for a long time.  

The Sunday Haul (on 14-09-2025)

 

It was quite a surprise that it did not rain almost all day last Sunday as there was a forecast of heavy rain for a couple of days, and also since it had rained quite heavily the day before, on Saturday evening. I was pleased that the weather gods were kind as I set out for Abids. As usual I stopped at Chikkadpally and found three good titles. 

The first find of the day was a nice copy of ‘Japan: The Story of a Nation’ by Edwin O. Reischauer with an attractive golden yellow cover with a painting of flowers. The size was also different as it was narrower than the usual sizes that books come in. 

With another seller down the road I found two wonderful titles I did not expect to find. Sometime back I had found a copy of ‘In Search of Lost Time Volume I: Swann’s Way’ and realized that it would be impossible to find the other volumes. But miracles happen and last Sunday I found copies of Volumes I and II of ‘In Search of Lost Time’ by Marcel Proust- ‘In Search of Lost Time Volume II: Within a Budding Grove’ and ‘In Search of Lost Time Volume III: The Guermantes Way’. I was delighted that I found these wonderful titles and at the same time felt alarmed that put together they run into hundreds of pages that I would never find the time to read unless I put aside everything and read these. 

Another title I picked up was a copy of ‘Looking for Maya’ by Atima Srivastava that had an attractive cover, and also because I felt I had read the author’s name somewhere long time back. I picked up as it was a Penguin title. This book was a British Library discardd.dI got it for fifty rupees.

The Sunday Haul (on 07-09-2025)

 

Last Sunday it was the day after the Ganesh procession, and the trucks with long trailers that had carried the idols for immersion were returning with the revellers playing loud music. Then there was all the trash, and stuff left in the aftermath of the procession. As I expected all the sellers hadn’t turned out so I could get over my browsing in under an hour.

But before I got to Abids I made the usual stop at the sellers in Chikkadpally. I was drawn to an attractive cover on a book with the title ‘The Cousins’ by Prema Raghunath on it. I hadn’t heard of the title and also the author seemed unknown but I bought the book anyway after I noticed that it was published by Zubaan. 

The next find was at another seller in Chikkadpally who had many good titles that I was tempted to buy but instead ended up buying a copy of ‘Penguin Island’ by Anatole France. I had only read about Anatole France but this was the first book by him that I found. 

At Abids where I reached about half hour later, I found a copy of ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ by Raymond Carver. It was in a heap of Rs.50 books, and I hesitated for a few moments because I already had a copy of it. But in the end, I picked it up. 

The last title in Sunday’s haul wasn’t something I picked up off the pavement. A couple of weeks ago I had met Anil Battula, a bibliophile who is so passionate about books and literature that he is said to have a vast collection of Telugu books, some going back to the 1930s or earlier than that. Last Sunday, I met him again and while talking with him over chai at the Star of India café in Abids along with another bibliophile he showed me a copy of a classic titled that he had got translated into Telugu and published it. It was a copy of ‘Cycle Donga’ originally ‘Bicycle Thief’ by Cesare Zavattini (?) that was made into a movie by Vittorio de Sica, and that became a classic.  It had a beautiful cover and I took it from him. I don’t know much Telugu so I do not know when I will finally get around to reading it. 

The Sunday Haul (on 31-08-2025)

 

It was cloudy last Sunday in Hyderabad though it didn’t rain while I was in Abids until afternoon. Once again, I had a haul of seven books though I had planned to buy just one or two books. 

The first find was a title that first felt like it was a collection of stories for children but ‘Monkey Times and Other Stories’ by Thangam is a collection of real-life experiences, interesting ones, of Thangam, who had written down these in a notebook. I was surprised to read that she had lived in Hyderabad when the book was published in 2003, when she was eighty years old. I got this hardcover title for only thirty rupees.

I had someone, a follower on X, with me so while I showed her a book she might be interested in, I noticed a title I was interested in. It was a copy of ‘Ranjit Singh: Maharaja of the Punjab’ by Khushwant Singh that had a very attractive cover with the portrait of Ranjit Singh. It is a biography that I hope to read sometime soon. 

The next find was another hardcover title- ‘Hyderabad Hazir Hai’ by Vanaja Banagiri, a collection of essays on various aspects of Hyderabad by some notable Hyderabadis like Narendra Luther, Vijay Marur, Mohammad Ali Baig, G. Rajaraman and others with their essays on various aspects of Hyderabad such as its cuisine, art, and even real estate! But the essay I liked most was ‘All Things Hyderabadi’ by Vanaja Banagiri, the editor of the collection, because she covered everything in it- the history, the lingo, clothing, religion, hospitality, architecture etc. 

In a Rs. 50 lot I spotted a copy of ‘Travelling In, Travelling Out’ by Namita Gokhale, a collection of travel essays by Aakar Patel, Jerry Pinto, Navtej Sarna, Urvashi Butalia, and others about their travels. 

Sometime last week I had received a copy of ‘Bombay- A Private View’ by Vinod Mehta that he seemed to have self-published when he was very young. There is a photograph of him on the back cover, complete with long hair and dark glasses. Last Sunday when I saw a nice copy of ‘Lucknow Boy’ by Vinod Mehta, his memoir of his days as a journalist and editor of ‘Outlook’ I picked it up though I already have a copy that I read long time back.

This was one title that has been eluding me since a long time, ever since I read about it. The seller called me and asked me to look in a bag he had. It was filled with some good titles including ‘Churchill’s Secret War’ by Madhusree Mukerjee, one of the two titles I picked out of the bag. I have a copy of ‘The Land of the Naked People’ by the same author that I had first read, only half of it, when I was in Port Blair sometime in 2006. A friend had given it to me and I had to give it back to him after reading only half the book as he was leaving Port Blair. 

The other title that I took out of the bag was a nice copy of ‘An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan’ by Jason Eliot. As the title says it is a travel book. I already have another title by Jason Eliot that I had bought sometime back. I have yet to read it. 

The Sunday Haul (on 24-08-2025)

 The weather was beautiful in Hyderabad last Sunday with clear skies and bright sunshine when I set out a little early for Abids. As usual I stopped at Chikkadpally to check out the few sellers there. I had been seeing a hardcover copy of ‘In An Antique Land’ by Amitav Ghosh since more than a month that I hesitated to ask the seller about its price. I had thought he would ask me more than two hundred rupees but when he said ‘only eighty rupees’ I grabbed it.

At the last seller at Chikkadpally I saw a beautiful, almost new copy of ‘Orientalism: Western Concepts of the Orient’ by Edward W. Said, a title I already own. But this copy was too good to resist and also people ask me for copies of such titles so I bought it paying only hundred rupees for it. 

The first title I saw when I reached Abids was again another one I owned three copies of. I saw a beautiful copy of ‘The Old Patagonian Express’ by Paul Theroux, in a heap selling for fifty rupees only. Theroux is one of my favorite writers and I cannot resist buying all his travel titles so I bought this copy too for just fifty rupees. 

Afterwards I sat in the Star of India with a few new friends I had made at Abids thanks to another friend, Srinivas who is a regular at Abids. We talked for about an hour about Telugu literature and the titles they had bought at Abids just before we met. I can read Telugu but I take a long time to read in Telugu so I really don’t know if I should pick up one slim title. 

We all walked down to the Best Books store down the road and looked at the books outside the store on the pavement. There were books that were for sale at Rs. 100 for three titles. I spotted a copy of ‘Pilgrim’s Road’ by Bettina Selby, a name I had heard recently or one that I must have jotted down in one of my old notebooks. It was a travel title and there’s no way I am letting go of travel titles so I wanted to buy it. But I had to buy two more titles to go along with it. I found a copy of ‘Walking Erect with an Unfaltering Gaze: Myself when Young’ by Ambai, the Tamil writer. I was glad to have found it to be sort of autobiographical with the book being about her life until she is twenty-three years old. It is published by National Book Trust and probably aimed at young readers. But I was delighted to find it so added it and then looked for one more title to complete three titles.  

Again, I found another title that I already own- ‘Learning to Swim and Other Stories’ by Graham Swift, a slim collection of short stories. There are eleven stories in this collection, and when I read one of the stories, I realized that I hadn’t read the copy I had found long back.  

The best find of the day was a few minutes before I left. We were dispersing and they were taking leave of me when I was in a lane looking at the books a seller had when my eyes fell on a small book that looked out of place. I saw that it was a copy of ‘Defeat for Death’ by K.A. Abbas, and on the cover was the price Rs.2! I looked inside and saw that it was published in 1944 and realized that it could be a rare book and bought it for just thirty rupees. 

The Sunday Haul (on 17-08-2025)

For once the weather forecasts by the Met Dept as well as weather-enthusiasts were totally off the mark as it did not rain on the days they said it would rain. I had thought it would rain on Sunday also and in fact prayed it wouldn’t rain in the mornings until afternoon when I would have finished my rounds of the book market there. It happened exactly as I prayed, a rare occurrence in my life prayers getting answered!, as it did not rain until about two in the afternoon. 

It was cloudy though when I started for Abids, stopping at Chikkadpally first to check out the books by the sellers there. I struck gold when I found a hardcover copy of ‘Rebel Sultans’ by Manu S. Pillai, an author whose books I hadn’t read yet but had read his columns. 

I had already read the book a long time back and also have a copy but when I saw the copy of ‘A Bend in the River’ by V.S. Naipaul with a different cover that was too attractive to ignore I bought it. This I found at Chikkadpally with a seller who I notice is always reading from a book and hardly pays attention to those buying his books. I think he is the only seller who reads the books he sells. I got it for sixty rupees. After buying this book I took the bus to Abids. 

Once again, the second time on last Sunday I found another copy of a book I already have but with a different cover that was too attractive to ignore. I saw a copy of ‘Life: A User’s Manual’ by Georges Perec, a copy that was far better than the copy I had bought a couple of years ago. I haven’t yet read it but I hope to read this copy. 

In the same shelf I saw a copy, a nice one in perfect condition, of ‘Ideology & Socialism’ by Andre Beteille whose essays I’ve read in newspapers like The Hindu many times. But this was the first book by Beteille that I found so bought it right away. I got both the above books for three hundred rupees. 

Just before I started for home, I took a last look at a seller where I spotted a bright cover that was too attractive to ignore and picked it up to see what it was. It was a copy of ‘Gendethimma’ by Srikrishna Alanahalli, translated by P.P. Giridhar into English from the original novel in Kannada.  On the back I read that Srikrishna Alanahalli was one of the foremost Navya movement novelists and is second to none in his depiction of rural Karnataka. I couldn’t resist the beautiful cover with a drawing by Vaikuntam (Thota Vaikuntam?) and also the fact that I wanted to read it so I bought it. I got it for only thirty rupees. 

The Sunday Haul (on 10-08-2025)

 

Last week it had been raining cats and dogs in Hyderabad causing much inconvenience to traffic and also me because I was worried the rain might continue to Sunday too and that I would not be able to go to Abids. Luckily it did not rain at all last Sunday though it was cloudy but no sign of rain. Praying it would not rain till afternoon when I usually finish my trip to Abids I left a little early. First I got to Chikkadpally to check out the books with the few sellers who lay out their books on the pavement.

With one seller I saw a beautiful copy of ‘The Case for India’ by Will Durant, a hardcover that was published by Strand Book Store, Mumbai and was a limited-edition copy. I loved the cover with the title in light yellow leaping at the eye of the beholder. It was slightly pricey at a hundred and fifty rupees that I did not mind paying since I have seen copies, scores of them, of ‘The Story of Philosophy’ at Abids and in second-hand bookstores in Hyderabad. This was an entirely new title by Will Durant that I was not aware of so I bought it. 

Ever since I visited Kohima in Nagaland and also Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh I have been smitten by the North East and its people. So, when I saw a copy of ‘A Resurgent Northeast: Narratives of Change’ by Ashish Kundra with the cover with pictures of three tribal men of one of the tribes in the North East I bought it right away. After buying these two books at Chikkadpally I started for Abids hoping I would not find anything interesting. 

I had read about ‘Gift from the Sea’ by Anne Morrow Lindbergh sometime back as being a good book about but never found it anywhere. Last Sunday I picked up a beautiful almost new copy of this title that I got for only twenty rupees. I wonder if it is something like ‘A Year by the Sea’ by Joan Anderson. 

I’ve never read anything by Colin McInnes though I saw a lot of his novels at Abids. But this title I found was a collection of excerpts from his stories and novels including some essays. I saw a copy of ‘Absolute MacInnes’ edited by Tony Gould in a heap of Rs.50 books and bought it. 

Earlier in previous visits I had seen copies of ‘Between the Lines’ by Kuldip Nayar, a veteran journalist in India known for his political insights into major developments. Last Sunday I saw an almost brand new copy of ‘Between the Lines’ and bought it without a second thought, and surprisingly the seller wanted only a hundred rupees for this copy. 

The Sunday Haul (on 03-08-2025)

 

It was a partly sunny, partly cloudy in Hyderabad last Sunday when I set out for Abids. As usual I stopped at Chikkadpally before proceeding to Abids. The first find of Sunday was a nice copy of ‘Islam’ by Karen Armstrong. I had first found her ‘The Spiral Staircase’, her memoir of her life as a nun while very young and leaving the convent sort of disillusioned. I also have read her ‘Twelve Ways to a Compassionate Life’ sometime back. I got ‘Islam’ for a hundred rupees. Afterwards I got into a bus to Koti and thence to Abids. 

I had seen a copy of a book of stories in Hindi by Vijay Dhan Dhetha with a seller near the GPO but the seller had asked for a price I wasn’t willing to pay and he wasn’t willing to reduce the price, asking me to quote another amount. I was in no mood to play games with him and so left without buying it. 

I was lucky to spot a nice small sized book with ‘Cultural Action for Freedom’ by Paulo Friere with an attractive cover that drew my eye to it. I had earlier found and also read ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ by Paulo Friere, and so this new title I wanted to read also. The seller asked for just thirty rupees for it that I was glad to pay. 

Somehow I feel my English isn’t so good and that I have to improve it by whatever means. So I buy books on grammar, usage, style and so on whenever I spot such titles. Last Sunday I came across a nice copy of ‘English Blues’ published by New Indian Express that I seem to have bought long time back and since I wasn’t sure about it I picked it up for thirty rupees. 

I had been seeing this copy of ‘The Moon by Whale Light’ by Diane Ackerman with a seller since the past few Sundays and did not feel like buying it though I love to read writing on nature. When I read in the inside page that Diane Ackerman was a staff writer at The New Yorker and had also written a few best-selling books about nature I bought it. 

A long back I had read about Krupabai Sattianadhan, a Brahmin woman whose parents were among the first to be converted to Christianity sometime in the 1850s or so. I wanted to read about her but couldn’t find much anywhere. Last Sunday I spotted a copy of ‘Kamala: The Story of a Hindu Child-Wife’ by Krupabai Satthianadhan and bought it. 

More than a decade ago I picked up a copy of ‘Monkey Grip’ by Helen Garner after having seen it with the same seller for many weeks. I hadn’t heard of the title or Helen Garner so I hesitated though it was a Penguin book. But after I bought it and read it soon after ‘Monkey Grip’ became one of my favorite novels. Last Sunday I spotted another copy with the same cover and bought it right away. 

Arms loaded with six books and on the way home when I stopped at a seller and saw a copy of‘The Rinehart Reader’ by Jeff Rackham & Beverly J. Slaughter. This was a thick volume, one of those books that colleges in the United States recommend to their students to improve their reading and writing skills. I had bought a few such book in the past because they contain many good stories and essays by well-known writers, to illustrate the fundamentals of writing short stories and essays. In one such book I found a short story that I had been looking for everywhere. 

Then right next to it was a copy of ‘The World and Africa’ by W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, a writer whose books I keep reading about on social media where people post the covers of his books. I had to buy it because it was my first du Bois title and also that it was about Africa, a place I never tire of reading about. These two titles cost me three hundred rupees!