This is the third Sunday after the lockdown here has been lifted here that I am going to Abids in Hyderabad in search of books. Almost all the book sellers are back on the pavement but it still feels that some are missing. There isn’t much of a crowd and that’s what is making Abids look so desolate. Some of the sellers I chatted up told me they aren’t doing much business as not many people are visiting.
I do not know about others but I am coming and buying books which is what matters to me. Last Sunday I bought five titles. I own a few books of literary criticism, something that I try to read to understand literature. Though most are academic sounding with a lot of theories I enjoy reading such books. Last Sunday I spotted a copy of ‘Axel’s Castle’ by Edmund Wilson with a seller near Hollywood shoes in the lane where I park my two wheeler. I got it for forty rupees. Leafing through the book I saw that Edmund Wilson is also the author of ‘Memoirs of Hecate County’ that I had picked up a long time ago but had not read yet.
Next find was with the same seller where I had found a copy of ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ by George V. Higgins. It was another title with the same author- ‘Trust’ that I got for forty rupees. I liked ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ that I started reading ‘Trust’ later in the day and finished it last night. It wasn’t as good as Eddie Coyle but interesting enough.
The 3 for 200 pile was still there but a lot diminished. But I was able to fish out three titles. The first was a nice copy of ‘Sick’ by Porochista Khakpour, and the second was a copy of ‘Scent of a Woman’ by Giovanni Arpino, and the third was a copy of ‘Going to the Wars’ by Max Hastings. It was a surprise when the seller took only a hundred and fifty rupees from me instead of 200. Sometimes I am lucky. With the money I saved I had a couple of chota samosas and a cup of chai at Grand near the GPO.
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