Almost everyone I talked to in my small circle of family and friends seems to have been laid low by the fevers that are raging unabated in this city. Last week, at last, it was my turn and I was in bed for two and half days, that included last Sunday. Though I was in bed I did not stop dreaming about all the books spread out on the pavements at Abids that I would miss checking out. By Tuesday I had recovered from the fever and on Thursday I decided to drop in at a second-hand bookstore to bring down another sort of fever I seemed to have developed- the book fever. Since I was using the Metro train I decided to check out Liberty Books right beside the Durgam Cheruvu metro station in the evening.
About a year ago I had come across a badly damaged copy of ‘The Fall of a Sparrow’ by Salim Ali at Abids. Even though it was in tatters, with termite holes all over, I wanted to buy it because it was a very old edition. But I reluctantly left it alone and felt bad because I haven’t yet read that classic. About a fortnight ago on a visit to Liberty I had seen a good copy of ‘The Fall of a Sparrow’ by Salim Ali but decided to buy it later. It was on my mind all these days and on Thursday when I spotted it again I breathed a sigh of relief.
Last year in July I was in Delhi and had picked up a copy of Simon Winchester’s ‘Calcutta’ that I never got around to reading because of its bulk, and kept telling myself that I would read it one of these days. But before I could read the book on Calcutta by Simon Winchester I found another title on Calcutta at the Liberty Books store. I spotted a beautiful copy of ‘Calcutta: The City Revealed’ sitting atop a stack of books. It was another thick but after some initial hesitation I bought it unable to bear the thought of leaving it behind. I got these two books for under four hundred rupees.
On the way back home I got lucky when a girl mistaking me for a senior citizen offered me her place to sit. It was the perfect excuse for me to begin reading ‘Calcutta’ by Geoffrey Moorhouse, and it was so engrossing that I almost missed getting down at Secunderabad station. After I finish reading this title I plan to start reading Simon Winchester’s Calcutta.
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