I don’t know what more I can write about the Sunday book market at Abids except that I never fail to be amazed at the surprises it throws up regularly. Once again last Sunday I hauled in another wonderful catch of some truly fantastic titles. I found three good titles I wouldn’t have found in any bookstore. One of the titles I have been desperately looking for is ‘The Survivor and Other Stories’ by Arun Joshi that I wanted to get my hands on ever since I read about it. Though I haven’t been able to find it so far I found a collection of stories that had a story from ‘The Survivor and Other Stories’
The first find of last Sunday was a hardcover copy of ‘Contemporary Indian Short Stories in English’ compiled by Shiv K. Kumar and published by Sahitya Akademi. I found it with a seller beside the café where I take a tea break. I have found many collections of Indian short stories in English but this seems to the best because it contains stories by a dazzling line up of some of the best writers in India. The following are the 24 stories in this collection;
Cold Wave by K.A. Abbas;
The Liar by Mulk Raj Anand;
The Betrayal by Sujatha Balasubramaniam;
The Eyes are Not Here by Ruskin Bond;
Versus the Godman by Upamanyu Chatterjee;
The Jahangir Syndrome by Keki Daruwalla;
Fish Mayonnaise by Kishori Charan Das;
The Submerged Valley by Manoj Das;
Heavy is Gold by Sunita Jain;
The Boy with the Flute by Arun Joshi;
To Nun with Love by Shiv K. Kumar;
Eyes by Jayanta Mahapatra’
A Pinch of Snuff by Manohar Malgaonkar;
Letters/4,5, and 6 by Anita Mehta;
Absolution by Dina Mehta;
The Womb by Chaman Nahal;
Green Sari by R.K. Narayan;
A Toast to Herself by Raji Narasimhan;
Afternoon of the House by Padma Pereira;
India-A Fable by Raja Rao;
Martand by Nayantara Sahgal;
If it were not for the Child by Ajoy Sen;
The Bottom Pincher by Khushwant Singh;
Not to be Loose Shunted by Ashok Srinivasan
There are some writers I haven’t heard about before until I found this wonderful collection. I haven’t heard of Ajoy Sen, Ashok Srinivasan, Padma Pereira, Raji Narasimhan, Anita Mehta, Sunita Jain, Sujatha Balasubramaniam so far but now I am glad I know who these writers are. This books seems to be from a college library because there was the stamp of Cauvery D.Ed College, Bangalore on one of the pages. I think this book is worth more than the hundred rupees I paid for it.
The second I spotted ‘The House at Adampur’ by Anand Lall I picked it up. It had the sort of irresistible cover that reminded me of the books brought out by Indian publishers in the sixties and seventies. I have not heard of the title or Arthur Lall, the writer. Inside I read that the book was first published by Alfred Knopf in 1956 but what I had in my hand was an Indian edition published by Pearl Publications, another new name for me. On the back I read that Anand Lall is better known by his westernized name Arthur Lall who was Amabassador and Permanent Representative of India to the UN back then. Anand Lall has also published another novel- Seasons of Jupiter. All this is fascinating information. I got it for just thirty rupees with the same seller who doesn’t have any idea about the value of the books he sells and sells them at a uniform price. The most interesting thing about the copy I found was that it belonged to a High Court Judge.
Then I found another book featuring two of my favourite writers. I found ‘V.S.Naipaul-An Introduction to His Work’ by Paul Theroux. Heinemann is the publisher and it was published first by Andre Deutsch in 1972. I thought maybe this book is some sort of a precursor to the book on Naipaul that Theroux wrote later. I got this book from a seller who doesn’t like to bargain much so I had to pay a hundred rupees for this.
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