Post 3 of 4: The Delhi Haul-3

On the first of November the two week training course I was attending came to an end. It was a Friday and back at my brother’s home in CR Park I read that there was a literary event the next day at IGNCA. On Saturday one of the programmes was a talk with three Sri Lankan writers, and it turned out I had read books written by these three writers. I had ‘Reef’ by Romesh Gunasekera, ‘Serendipity’ by Ashok Ferrey, and I had not only read two novels (The Amazing Racist’ and ‘Panther) by Chhimi Tenduf La I had also exchanged mails with him when he wrote to me after coming across my blog. So I decided to go the next day as I had nothing much to do.

On Saturday I reached IGNCA and it was like a carnival. There were bookstalls selling Hindi books. I decided to check out the books since there was a title I was looking for after I read about it somewhere in Caravan, I guess. It was ‘Naukar ki Kameez’ by Vinod Kumar Shukla and I found it in a stall. If I managed to read the book it would be the third Hindi novel that I would be reading. Later while flipping through the book I discovered that Vinod Kumar Shukla had done his M.Sc (Ag). I felt a minor thrill since I too had done my M.Sc (Ag) which made me resolve to read was ‘Naukar ki Kameez’ by Vinod Kumar Shukla one of these days.

The talk with the three Sri Lankan writers was in an auditorium. Before coming to IGNCA I had gone to Oxford Book Store in Connaught Place hoping to buy ‘Sun Catcher’ by Romesh Gunesekera and get it signed by the author. But I was disappointed to discover that OBS did not have titles by any of these three writers. However, there was a stall in IGNCA beside the auditorium where I found copies of ‘The Professional’ by Ashok Ferrey, ‘Loyal Stalkers’ by Chhimi Tenduf La and ‘Sun Catcher’ by Romesh Gunesekera. After the one hour talk I approached Chhimi Tenduf La first and got his book signed and also chatted with him for a while, and I did the same with Ashok Ferrey. Finally, I approached Romesh Gunesekera who put me at ease by asking me what I did and where I lived. He told me he had visited Hyderabad some time back and I wondered how I had missed it. Anyway he was gracious and signed on the copy of his book. I felt very pleased that my otherwise boring official trip to Delhi ended with this icing on the cake.