The Haul at New Delhi

After a long wait last week I managed to visit Pahargunj in New Delhi to check out ‘Jacksons Books’ that I had read about several years ago. Barely a fortnight after visiting Kohima I got the chance to visit New Delhi last week to attend a five-day training course. The venue was YMCA on Jai Sing Road which made it easy for me to explore many places in the evening after the training sessions of the day ended.

Last Monday, the very first day of the training course, as soon as the sessions ended I started for Paharganj with two things on my mind. I couldn’t do the first thing which was to have the chole bhature at Diwan Chand Sitaram of which I had read about recently. The place was closed by the time I reached there at around half past five in the evening. I was a bit disappointed about it but Jacksons Books was open which lifted my mood greatly.
‘Jacksons Books’ is a small roadside store but it is a minor treasure house. The titles are mostly those that foreign tourists visiting India would read up before landing in the country. There were books on spirituality, yoga, and travelogues on India by Eric Newby, Paul Theroux mostly. There were several copies of ‘The Pillars of Hercules’ ‘The Great Railway Bazaar’, ‘Dark Star Safari’ and other Paul Theroux titles that I almost bought but for the prices.

The first title I spotted in Jackson’s Books was a beautiful copy of ‘Simon Winchester’s Calcutta’ by Simon Winchester. The copy I found was almost new. I had recently read ‘Longing Belonging’ by Bishwanath Ghosh before visiting Kolkata briefly a fortnight ago, and wanted to read more about Kolkata so I bought it. I really hope the book is good because I had to pay quite a hefty sum for it.

The next find was another new looking title-‘The Ghosts of Meenambakkam’ by Ashokamitran. Ashokamitran happens to be one of my favourite writers so I picked it up without a second thought. For this too I had to pay a big sum but I did not mind because it was an Ashokamitran title. I read the slim book on the flight home from New Delhi and somehow I did not find it as good as other Ashokamitran titles.

A long time ago I had picked up a book by Laurens van der Post on a hunch. It was a copy of ‘Venture to the Interior’ that I read soon after and was found it interesting. So when I found ‘A Walk with a White Bushman’ by Laurens van der Post I added it to the haul. This book didn’t come cheap though.

There were more books in another room in a lane just beside the store that I decided to check out another day. On the last day of the training course just before leaving for the airport I once again went to Pahargunj. Though it was not yet five in the evening I was once again disappointed to see that there was no chole bhature left at Sitaram Dewan Chand that had downed its shutters.

I finally got to see the other stock of Jacksons Books kept in another room a few steps away. Here too there were books in almost all the languages of the world and in the large section of books in English I managed to spot a beautiful new copy of ‘Journals of John Cheever’ by John Cheever. It is one big tome and the kind of book I like to read and I bought it though I had to shell out four hundred rupees for it.
With four books making up the haul at New Delhi the visit was more meaningful than some of my past visits to the capital.