The Sunday Haul (on 29-10-2017)

This is the 1000th Post on this blog.

In the past due to either wrong judgment or overconfidence I missed buying some really good books at Abids. The following Sunday I try to locate the title after realizing my mistake but by then someone had already made away with the title. I missed several good titles that way, too many to be listed here. Once again I made the same mistake a couple of Sundays ago but last Sunday, however, I found a title I had missed on the previous Sunday. It was a huge relief to have found that title.

Two Sundays ago I had seen a copy of ‘Chinnery’s Hotel by Jaysinh Birjepatil at a seller near the GPO at Abids. I picked it up and took a look at the cover as I had not heard of the title or the author and put it back. It was a big mistake but I did not it then. The next Sunday, that is the Sunday before last, at Chikkadpally I saw ‘Khushwantnama-The Lessons of My Life’ by Khushwant Singh. I leafed through it and in one of the articles on writing in it I found a list of novels that made a deep impression on Khushwant Singh. One of the titles in the list was ‘Chinnery’s Hotel by Jaysinh Birjepatil. I felt like kicking myself for having not had the sense to pick it up the first time I saw it. I felt so bad that I did not buy ‘Khushwantnama’ thinking that it would remind me of the mistake I had made.

However, last Sunday I got lucky. When I reached the seller near GPO I looked carefully at the books spread out on the pavements and spotted ‘Chinnery’s Hotel by Jaysinh Birjepatil. It was a thrilling moment as I immediately pounced on it. The seller asked a hundred rupees for it that I paid gladly. Feeling expansive I wanted to savor the joy of finding a good title so I sat in Grand Hotel and leafed through Chinnery’s Hotel while sipping chai. I read that Jaysinh Birjepatil had written two more books-. I wonder why I had not read about this writer anywhere. But I was glad I found this book.

The icing on the cake was that I found ‘Khushwantnama’ too at Chikkadpalli and picked it up as well. I got this hard cover title with a beautiful cover for a hundred rupees. It has about to dozen short pieces on diverse topics that had appeared earlier in Outlook magazine, Hindustan Times, and The Tribune. Of all the articles I had been attracted by two- The Business of Writing and What it Takes to be a Writer. It was the latter article I had read standing and came across the list that had a dozen title of which ‘Chinnnery’s Hotel’ was one. There was another title- ‘The Hero’s Walk’ by Anita Rau Badami that I want to find next.