Before I stepped out of the house last Sunday I was aware there was a Heatwave forecast by the Met department and that the temperature would reach somewhere around 43 degrees C. It wasn’t even eleven in the morning when I started out for Abids but it felt like I was in an open oven with the sun beating down mercilessly. I almost turned back unwilling to bear the heat but since I had not been to Abids the previous Sunday I couldn’t resist my weekly fix of the Sunday Abids second hand book market. So on I went and the visit resulted in a haul of seven titles, all of them very interesting ones.
The first title I found was a beautiful copy of ‘A Kiss Before Dying’ by Ira Levine. I picked it up because it was a Penguin edition and also because I had not heard of this title before. Another reason was that the seller was someone who doesn’t usually ask for more than ten rupees for any book. So I got this title for ten rupees only along with another title that I found next to it. It was a copy of ‘The Girls from Overseas’ by Nergis Dalal. I have begun buying copies of titles of books in English by Indian writers that were published in the sixties and seventies. I have managed to collect quite a few of these wonderful titles. I got the copy of ‘The Girls from Overseas’ also for ten rupees.
Then after the chai at the Irani I realized that it was getting hotter by the hour so I wanted to finish as soon as possible and go back home. But as I kept finding one interesting title after another I stayed back hoping to find more. Another wonderful title I found was a beautiful copy of ‘Flavors of India’ by Madhur Jaffrey that had a stunning cover with the famous chef on it. I managed to get it for a hundred rupees. Moments after I bought it I spotted another wonderful title- ‘The Master of Petersburg’ by J.M. Coetzee on the same shelf. I paid only fifty rupees for ‘The Master of Petersburg.’
A few steps away I spotted a copy of ‘An Unfinished Woman’ by Lilian Hellman, her first memoir. I had only heard of Lilian Hellman but haven’t found anything by her so far so when I saw this title I decided to take it. I paid only thirty rupees for it.
Until recently I had seen a few copies of ‘The Singer’ by Mayah Balse, another English novel by an Indian writer published sometime in the sixties. But those copies I saw were not in a good condition with either the cover damaged or some pages missing. Last Sunday I found a copy of ‘The Singer’ by Mayah Balse in perfect condition and I grabbed it the moment I saw it.
A long time ago, more than fifteen years I guess, I picked up a book purely on a hunch. It did not have a cover but a cover made of white sheet on which was written ‘Paperweight’ by Stephen Fry. Later after I read the enjoyable book I became a fan of Stephen Fry’s humor. When I found a nice and proper copy of the same title with the cover intact recently I bought it. Though I haven’t read his other titles I did not want to miss buying a copy of his memoir ‘More Fool Me’ by Stephen Fry that I saw last Sunday at Abids. It did not matter to me how hot it was out there but I was glad about my seven book haul last Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment