The Sunday before last Sunday I missed the weekly hunt for books at Abids. There were some important guests coming over so I was ordered not to step out of the house that Sunday. But last Sunday I went to Abids and made for the Sunday before picking up six good titles. I came home with six books taking my haul of books so far this year to 196. There are still four Sundays to go before the year ends not to forget the Hyderabad Book Fair beginning a day before Christmas. It means at least another dozen books are likely to be added to the year’s haul that will cross the 200 figure again.
There’s a mix of reasons why I picked up ‘Khushwant Singh’s India; A Mirror for its Monsters and Monnstrosities’ by Khushwant Singh last Sunday at Abids. Firstly, I like to read analytical essays by intelligent observers. Secondly a curiosity to know how some problems have grown over the years in the country, and thirdly, I am attracted to books published in the country in the late sixties and early seventies. The last reason is a desire to know how Indian writers present the country and its problems to the Western reader. All these made me buy this title within moments of finding it with a seller who gave it to me for only thirty rupees.
The next book I found was of a similar vintage but a fiction title. I found a bound copy of Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’ that I did not look at closely when I first saw it. I already own a nice copy but something about the cover and the overall appearance of the book made me pick it up for a better look. My interest grew when I noticed that it was published by Prentice Hall in 1973. The font was one that almost universal in the country during that time which I found to be quaintly charming. What really made me buy it was the name of the person stamped on the front page. The name was- Syed Shahid Raza, Lieutenant 4112-Z, Indian Navy. The copy was from the American Library at USIS Calcutta. What a long journey that this copy of Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’ in my hands must have made over the years.
The next two finds were two cookbooks that I found one after the other though with different sellers. When I saw a decent copy of Madhur Jaffrey’s ‘A Taste of India’ in a pile of fifty-rupee books I couldn’t resist buying it though I already own a copy that I found quite recently.
The other cookbook was a beautifully preserved copy of ‘Classic Indian Cooking’ by Julie Sahni that I grabbed off the pavement the moment I spotted it. It was published first by ‘Grub Street’ London in 1997, and reprinted in 2008 in India. I got it for only seventy rupees though the book runs into nearly 450 pages and has some beautiful illustrations.
With the same seller I found two more wonderful titles. I had resolved to read all titles by Charles McCarry after I read his ‘Tears of Autumn’ that I had picked up on a hunch some years ago. Over time I found his other titles like ‘Second Sight’, ‘The Better Angels,’ ‘The Miernik Dossier,’ and ‘The Last Supper.’ So last Sunday when I saw a nice copy of ‘The Secret Lovers’ by Charles McCarry I was pleased with myself.
The other titles was a hardcover book with a jacket and appeared like a library copy. It is only a few years for my retirement, less than five years in fact. Naturally, thoughts of retirement have replaced other thoughts in my mind and the foremost thought is what I should do after retiring. The things I could do after my retirement range from finally beginning to write seriously to going back to the small town where I was born to live a quiet life with my collection of books. Of course, there are always new things getting added frequently- travelling, living on a farm, learning something that would keep me occupied and so on. So when I spotted a book with the title ‘taking retirement- a beginner’s diary’ in small letters I was curious about it. The author was Carl H. Klaus who, I read on the inside of the back cover, was the founder of the non-fiction writing program at Iowa University. I needed no other reason to buy it. This book I will certainly read before I retire.
The last title was a children’s book. I picked it up because it looked like something good. It was a copy of ‘Wandy and the Bumbly Wizard’ by James Flora who also illustrated the book.
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