Finding another Second Hand Bookstore

On Thursday I accidentally stumbled upon a second hand bookstore at Punjagutta. I was passing through Punjagutta area in the afternoon and I happened to see a board of ‘The Book Store’ in the lane behind Model House. I checked out the store which was a smallish affair but well stocked. I was surprised when the guy told me the store was existing since three years. I wonder why I did not get to know about it. But now that I found it out I am glad to add to the list of second hand bookstores in Hyderabad. I have to do a post on them soon.

The address is: The Book Store, 6-3-456/A/7, Dwarakapuri Colony, Behind Model House, Punjagutta.

Back to the store, I saw a couple of books by Naipaul I should have picked up but didn’t. Almost all the books at the store are priced above hundred rupees. It has a pretty decent collection including computer books and stuff like that. I browsed for sometime hoping I’d find a nice book but I did not find any. I wasn’t disappointed though since I plan to return sometime soon for a more detailed browsing. Incidentally this is the third second hand bookstore in the Punjagutta area. There’s one on one side of the flyover and another on the other side. I was told the guy puts up books at Abids too on Sundays.

Goonda in Action

Not many dramatic situations shown in movies actually happen in real life. Though such situations happen sometimes, not many can be witness to them. One such scene happened when I was in Sultan Bazar yesterday. It isn’t a very dramatic situation but an interesting one nevertheless. I saw a hoodlum at work collecting payouts from street vendors in broadlight, and that too in the neighborhood of a police station.

I was hanging around Sultan Bazar on a minor errand. I was parking my bike when I noticed a guy with long, curly hair, a stubble on his chin and a paunch bigger than his chest say something to a woman standing near a sugarcane juice stall. He had a nasty look on his face. He did not even look at the woman but was staring in another direction while talking to her. The woman said to another person beside her, ‘Haven’t we paid yesterday?’ and the other person nodded his head. The woman gave the hoodlum twenty bucks which he thrust into his pocket and walked away.

I was watching this exchange with interest and he happened to glance at me for a second before walking away to another pushcart vendor. I watched fascinated as the vendor paid a tenner to the hoodlum who simply stuffed it in his trouser pocket and swagger to another vendor. I realized this was a small time operator if he is collecting just ten bucks a day from each vendor. He did not look a municipal tax collector and he also did not give any receipt for the money.

The police station was just a few steps away but what can they do if no vendor complains and instead pays dutifully? There must be scores of such pests around living off the earnings of vendors and such people in the city.