The Sunday Haul- A Book on Japan

The only name that comes to mind whenever I think of Japan is ‘Aki Morita.’ It wasn’t until recently that I came to know Morita is one remarkable person who was behind another remarkable company- Sony Corporation that itself brings out some pretty remarkable products. Come to think of it, the Japanese are one set of remarkable people. Who else could think of inventing products like the Walkman, the electric rice cooker and everything else that is highly functional yet fits in one’s palm- like my Sony camera, which unfortunately, has stopped working. Anyway, what I wanted to convey was that any country where such imaginative and inventive people live is bound to be one remarkable country. And if one cannot visit such a remarkable country the least one can do is read more about it and weep that one cannot visit it in one’s life time.

Of course I do also know about Honda, Nissan, Nikon, sake, Hokkaido, the Kurile Islands, manga, Tokyo, the bullet train and several names that bring Japan to mind. It may give one the impression that either Japan is going to figure a lot in this post or that I may be going to Japan shortly. I wish the latter could be true but it is highly unlikely, as long as I am working for the government, that I will be in a plane bound for Tokyo. Anyway, the thing is that though I have read a lot about Japanese people and the products they make, I haven’t come across any book in which Japan features prominently. I have read one piece in a collection of essays in which Pico Iyer writes about living somewhere in rural Japan. Apart from that I haven’t read much about Japan. Even the Conde Nast Traveler magazines I have with me do not carry any exhaustive write ups about Japan.

Quite interestingly, my first Dave Barry book was ‘Dave Barry Does Japan’ which I found at a sale in ‘Gangarams’ when they had a branch in Hyderabad. DBDJ is incredibly funny and I fell in love with his style of writing. This was the first book I found after reading several of his articles which appeared in the Sunday issue of The Asian Age. It was a paper back and years later I found a hardcover which I cherish like anything. Last Sunday I picked up a book that I thought was another travel book on Japan but turned out to be something else. The book was ‘Pictures from the Water Trade’ by John David Morley. I picked it up for twenty rupees from a heap of books. It isn’t exactly an account of the writer’s life in Japan narrated in the first person but the book is written from the view point of another character which we have to assume as the author’s alter ego. Anyway, I bought this book after reading the back page on which Colin Thubron writes that the book ‘joins the tiny handful of books on Japan which display both deep acquaintance and imaginative insight.’ I hope the book turns out to be what Colin Thubron says it is or else I'll never visit Japan even if I get free air tickets.

Till the Cows Come Home

Out here in the countryside where I work, apart from the clean air, an unhurried life there are a lot of things worth knowing just for fun. Not only are there less people per square kilometer here, there probably would be one buffalo or cow for every five people. In statistician’s lingo the buffalo/cow to people ratio would be 1:5 which is quite a favorable ratio when you look at it from certain angles which I will come to shortly. This favorable ratio means that if one is living in the countryside one gets to hear the bellowing of cattle, people milking buffaloes or cows, stacks of hay etc. One also gets an abundant supply of milk, curds, ghee and the like. It also means there is an abundance (overabundance, if you ask me) of dung. One needn’t go very far if one happens to be in need of cow dung whatever the purpose be. Sometimes one can find it right in one’s courtyard.

Last week people hereabouts (that is in Andhra Pradesh) celebrated the festival of Sankranti. It is a festival when men do not have anything particular to do except eat all the goodies prepared by the women. The children fly kites and the women spend half the morning drawing intricate rangolis in front of their homes. Sankranti is perhaps the only time when women who otherwise don’t have anything, even remotely, to do with cow dung suddenly need it very badly. They beg, cajole or even threaten their maidservants to bring a dollop of dung on Sankranti. In the countryside all a woman has to do to get some cow dung is to step outside the house to find all the cow dung one wants. But in a city, especially a city like Hyderabad, obtaining even a tiny amount of cow dung is an impossible task. One can perhaps get gold more readily and easily than cow dung.


Normally cow dung isn’t an important part of daily life in the city. But during Sankranti it tops of the list of ‘Most Wanted’ items which presents many problems. In Hyderabad the cow/buffalo to people ration must be something like 1:25,00,000, that is, one buffalo or cow for every 2.5 million persons. One cannot find cowdung for love or money unless one is living in areas like Amberpet or Afzal Gunj where the Musi flows past. One can find a couple of emaciated cows near vegetable markets and that’s it. There was a time when herds of buffaloes crossing the road to wade into the Hussainsagar Lake would cause traffic to stop for a few minutes. But now the scene’s changed. One gets to see buffaloes and cows only on National Geographic. So, one can imagine the plight of the housewife who wants to put a couple of blobs of cow dung as part of her rangoli. With just a couple of hundred cows and buffaloes for a population that’s in tens of millions, there’s bound to be a demand-supply problem of cow dung. But there are always people to help out- maidservants.

I have no idea how our maidservant did it but she managed to get her hands on some prime quality fresh cow dung that she proudly brought home. Sometimes I think the housewives underestimate their maidservants. It made my mom happy. I was more happy. Ever since I’ve been posted in the country side my mother always tells me to bring stuff like groundnuts, guavas, custard apple when I come home for the weekend. Luckily, she did not tell me to bring me you know what.

The Sunday Haul- More Books on Writing

No one can be blamed if they’re getting the impression that maybe I’ve been buying far too many books on writing than is good for me. As a matter of fact/ actually I too am getting the same impression. But I’m helpless about it because my writing is like that. I need to write much better than what I am doing now. If the hits on the blog and my nervousness about showing my manuscript are any indication then I still have a long way to go before I can even think of making it to the long lists.

Anyway, last Sunday at Abids I picked up yet another book on writing. In fact, I had picked up one earlier during the week. On Saturday I had been to a sale of second hand books organized by Best Books at YMCA, Secunderabad. At the sale I had seen a book on writing that I wanted to buy but did not because of its price- Rs. 145 only. On Sunday I was delighted to find the same title at Abids but at a much lesser price. The book was Donald Hall’s ‘Writing Well’, a 325-page tome that I got for only fifty rupees. I like to think that not buying the book at the sale was the first intelligent decision I took in the New Year.

However, since I can never leave a bookstore, much less a second hand book sale, empty handed, I had picked up another book on writing. I found Gene Perret’s ‘Become a Richer Writer’ and bought it for Rs. 95. I know it is on the higher side but considering what the title promises I guess it is money well spent. The book is in first person which is what I look for in books on writing. One learns more about writing from such books than the academic tomes.

With the addition of these two books on writing, my collection of books on writing has further expanded though not my skill. Regretfully and much to my disappointment, reading even a hundred plus books on writing doesn’t seem to have done much for my writing. If it had been anyone else in my place I am sure that after reading just a couple of books on writing they would have learnt all there was to learn about writing and also gone ahead and found a place on the Booker short list. But then government blokes are not exactly known to be smart in the first place or they wouldn’t have been in the government.

One needn’t go very far to know that Hyderabad has arrived, as far as reading tastes are concerned. I found this month’s (Jan 2010) issue of the Vanity Fair at Abids. Not only did I find the absolutely latest issue of VF I got it for only ten rupees. I’m yet to figure out how the magazine found its way here but it makes me one of the few persons in Hyderabad to have read the latest issue of Vanity Fair. Not that it amounts to anything great but it gives me reason to claim that I am rather well read!!

Fans of Barkha Dutt, if there are any, would be interested to know that apart from being on TV reading the news, hosting talk shows and reporting from odd places she not only finds the time to read magazines like Vanity Fair but also finds the time to write letters to their editors pointing out inaccuracies. A letter from Barkha Dutt to the editor has been published in the issue. More interesting were pieces on the lovely Meryl Streep, Elvis and the Hadron Collider. So that constituted my reading material for the week.

Life Saving Sips

Once every couple of years or so, the last week of December is that time of the year when I indulge in a bit of drinking. It might come as a surprise to many that I drink but it is something I do for friendships’s sake (not a very valid reason, I know) but being a loyal friend there are a few things I am willing to do for them. I share a couple of pegs with a bunch of overseas friends once every two years. A friend who lives in Australia had dropped in so I decided to lift my self-imposed ban on alcohol and drink a wee bit to make my friends happy. Of course, it also makes me happy because it brings back a lot of memories of the time when I used to drink.

I started to drink around the time I was in the final year of college when I stayed in the hostel on and off. It was New Year’s eve and a time when students living in hostels go completely crazy and out of control. I, along with two or three friends decided to have a few drinks in a friend’s room in keeping with the trend. The friend, a crafty fellow, mixed a potent cocktail to us first time drinkers. He spiked our beers with generous measures of whisky which had us singing into the wee hours. It is a recorded fact that I am not known to sing, least of all in public. I never sing in public, not even at gun point. But that night, my friends told me a couple of days later, I went through a lot of hit songs including the National Anthem.

Of course, that was the only time anyone saw me sing in public. Another time I drank I nearly burnt myself to death. During the final year of college we were supposed to live in a village for six months to experience the rural life. I liked no one in our group of six except a senior who was repeating the year. He was a good cook but was too fond of alcohol. It was too boring in the small village so once or twice a week we caught a bus to the nearest town which was an hour’s journey. Since we were students and did not want to be seen drinking, we had our drinks in the town and caught the last bus to the village.

On one such trip I somehow had more than my normal quota of whisky. I don’t remember how we got to the village and to our rooms but I remember to this day the bright glow of the carpet that had caught fire while I was asleep on it. Sometime during the night a mosquito coil (they hadn’t yet come out with mosquito mats or liquid dispensers) fell on the carpet on which I lay drunk out of my mind. It was a thick cotton carpet and burnt slowly without going up in flames. Another couple of centimeters and my blanket would have caught fire and that would have been the end of Mr. Vinod Ekbote at the young age of 21.

Luckily, the thick smoke from the slowly burning carpet brought us out of the whisky stupor. My friend and I stared at the burning carpet that glowed brightly in the dark as if it was a fireworks display. For a long time it did not occur to us to put out the fire. Finally, after a lot of marveling about how I had escaped being incinerated by a few millimeters, my friend came to life and put out the fire. When I got home months later I couldn’t really explain to my mom how the carpet came to be burnt in such an interesting pattern.

If it had happened to anyone else they would have certainly said that it was an eye-opener and promptly stopped drinking. Not me. I continued to drink rather mindlessly, for a long time after that incident. Later on, I realized I wasn’t enjoying it (I never enjoyed it anyway) and put a complete stop to my drinking. Not that I was a regular tippler but I drank now and then especially after we got our stipend. Now I drink about two pegs every two years or so like I did a fortnight ago with two of my dear friends.

2013 will be the year when I will be having my next drink unless Penguin or Harper Collins decide they better publish my novel before that, which would be one good reason to celebrate with a drink.

First Haul of the New Year

It was with a great deal of eagerness that I set out for Abids on the first Sunday of the New Year hoping to land a good haul, at least two books on the sunny morning that looked promising. After seeing the piles of scores of books lying around in the house, unread, I resolved to buy just one or two books a week at Abids during the year, and also not to buy a second or multiple copies of titles I already possess. But, the year’s first find was a second copy of a book by an author I simply cannot resist reading- Elmore Leonard.

When I saw the hardcover copy of Elmore Leonard’s ‘Touch’, lying among almost-new hardcover copies of novels of Stephen King, John le Carre and others, in a heap selling for thirty rupees I did not have the heart to leave the book behind. I bought it after I told myself that I’d keep the hardcover copy for myself and give away the paperback copy. So until I find someone who is in need of a good dose of some first class writing the two copies of ‘Touch’ stay with me.

I can imagine myself doing a lot of unlikely things like riding a horse (though I can’t), climbing a mountain, or even winning the Booker (ha, ha) I cannot ever imagine myself running. So I really do not understand what’s making me pick up magazines on running. After buying ‘Touch’ I once again bought a fairly recent issue of a running magazine, ‘Runner’s World’ I guess it was, for only ten rupees. Maybe in the near future I might begin running. In the magazine was an interesting article for beginner runners and another article on the various types of running shoes with their photographs, available in the market. They look so attractive I am tempted to take up running just for the pleasure of wearing the shoes.

Here’s the first downer of the year. Yesterday while passing through East Marredpally I noticed that Hyderabad’s smallest book store (that I’d written about in an earlier post) located in a petrol outlet has shut shop. It is really a surprise given the fact that new ones are opening in other areas. It’s the East Marredpally folks who are the real losers.

The First Scene of My Novel

This is the first scene from the latest draft of my four-years-in-the-making novel. I know it isn't exactly stuff that'll make anyone in the publishing industry jump up and reach for the telephone right away. Nevertheless I'd be interested to know if it appears to you like it might have a chance of getting through or if it makes you feel that the world would be a better place if I did not go ahead with my novel. Please tell me honestly what you think of it even if you want to tell me that I would never be able to get published even if I take a hundred years to finish revising it.

The moment I spotted the dull brown envelope in Ma’s hand I knew I had made a mistake. I shouldn’t have come home for lunch. Ma had the envelope in her hand while she opened the rickety gate to let my bike in. I took my time to park the old Rajdoot motorcycle. Ma held the envelope straight up in her hand so I couldn’t miss seeing it. I looked the other way and stepped into the house.

I wanted to have nothing to do with the damned envelope because it didn’t come just like that; it brought storms along with it, storms that created turmoil in my life regularly. Only six months ago I had weathered one such storm, and now I had another on hand, or rather, in Ma’s hand. Each time the storms seemed to get bigger and bigger. From the expression on her face it looked like this time it was going to be one big, big storm. Tough luck, Sunny I said to my reflection in the mirror above the sink while I washed my hands. This time maybe there was no way I could escape.

I had left home early in the morning without having breakfast. When Ma called me at the agency to say she had cooked fish for lunch I rushed home, salivating. It was clever of her but I did not feel like eating anything. Instead, I wanted to go as far away from home as possible, away from that blasted envelope. I silently cursed Venu, my friend. He was the one who had suggested that we register our names at the Employment office barely a couple of weeks after we passed out from college. That was more than two years ago. A month after we registered the dull brown envelopes had started coming once every six months. Now it was too late for regrets. I was on the verge of being trapped.

Inside the envelope that Ma now put on the dining table was a letter. The letter offered me a job as dull as or even duller than the color of the envelope it came in. I did not want to exchange my exciting job for any other. Nothing would make me leave my present job. Nothing, I told myself as I sat down at the dining table. I noticed Ma had placed the envelope near my plate. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Ma had kept it in the plate. She was like that, my mother.

Haul on the Last Sunday of the Year

Unlike the end of the year posts on this blog where I listed all the books I hauled up during the year, this year, unfortunately I could not remember to do it. One reason could be that I was unable to put together the list of books because I’ve written down each week’s finds in several notebooks that I am now unable to locate. But next week I promise to have the list ready and posted here even if no one wants to know how many books I might have bought during the year. The list might have more than a hundred books. For now, the Sunday’s haul would be enough I expect.

2009 must be the year when I picked up more magazines than books on some Sundays. It is also the year when I got subtle hints from life about my writing, hints I’ve just now begun to understand, hints that I still have a lot to learn about writing. Last Sunday I stumbled upon one such hint in the form of the July-August 2009 issue of ‘creative screenwriting’ magazine. That was the second issue of the same magazine I picked up in as many weeks. It had an article by Supriya Kelkar on how she came to be writing for Vidhu Vinod Chopra. There were two articles on movies by Quentin Tarantino. One was about Tarantino describing how he wrote ‘Inglourious Basterds’ in own style which was quirky to say the least. The other article was about the scenes in ‘Reservoir Dogs’ that never made it to the screen.

Another hint I got, this time about my non-existent photographic skills, was when I found ‘Digital Camera World’ magazine of July 2007. The mag had a lot of stuff about basic photography skills, taking control of one’s SLR and more information than one can take on the variety of digital cameras in the market. It also came with a free CD of 11 Photoshop Lessons. If I had found this magazine a month ago I would have considered it fortuitous but finding it now appears ironic if you recollect that my loyal three-year old digital camera conked out. I hope by the time I’ve finished learning the things in the magazine I’ll save enough to buy a decent camera.

I also wish someone in, say, Sony, Nikon, Olympus reads this post and realize how badly I need a camera right now, and offer me a nice digital camera of the latest model on discount. They needn’t give it to me on 100% discount but 99% would be just enough.

Another magazine I bought was the September 2007 issue of ‘BestLife’ magazine that I sometimes find at Abids. I bought this old issue after I saw on the cover that inside the magazine were ‘265 Simple Shortcuts to Ultimate Happiness’ which was exactly what I needed next to a digital camera on 99% discount. However, after I paid for it, I discovered that there were no such shortcuts inside the magazine. It wasn’t a total disappointment though because the magazine had some rather interesting pictures of someone called Carla Gugino wearing the kind of dresses she must have bought on 100% discount.

However, the find of the week was a book I was unaware of though I was very aware of the author. I have with me Anthony Bourdain’s ‘A Cook’s Tour’ (which I’ve read) and also ‘Kitchen Confidential’ which I haven’t yet read. I liked ‘A Cook’s Tour,’ so finding his ‘The Nasty Bits’ this Sunday was a pleasant surprise since I’ve come to like his style of writing. TNB is a mix of ‘Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones.’If not his dishes, at least I am enjoying Bourdain’s writing.

‘The Nasty Bits’ was the last book I bought in 2009. Of course, as planned I had also been to the 24th Annual Book Fair one last time and picked up Jay McInerney’s ‘Bright Lights, Bright City.’

A Happy New Year to all of you who’ve bothered to read this far. You’d be interested to know that this is the 200th post under the ‘BookJunkie’ label.

Tea at Anand's

Until recently I haven’t had a cup of tea that cost me more than six rupees anywhere. I do not think a good cup of tea (Irani or otherwise) costs anything more than that much anywhere unless of course if it were at any of the fancy star hotels where a cup of tea would set you back by as much as a month’s expenses on petrol, or in my case, books. Not even in Hyderabad did I have to pay as much for a cup of tea as I did in the small town where I work. But honestly, the tea I had there one day was worth every paisa.

Since I was posted in this small town I had been nosing around, as is my habit, for a place where I could find a decent cup of tea to have regularly. Sometime last week a colleague took me to a place that’s now become a regular pilgrimage centre for me. I had seen it once, tucked away in a by lane, during my rambling evening walks but did not pay much attention to it. However, I was glad my colleague took me to the small hotel in the lane. The joint is so small there is space for only four tables but offers more than a dozen different kinds of tea including green tea. Green tea! No place in Hyderabad that I frequent is green tea available on the menu.

Anyway, that day I had my first cup of tea in Anand Café. We ordered masala tea and sat waiting for about ten minutes. It was that time of the day when I am not able to think clearly until there’s some tea in the bloodstream. So I waited rather impatiently watching someone grind something with a pestle and mortar and put it in the saucepan. It was worth the wait for the masala tea whipped up by the person was simply out of the world. There was ginger in it, cardamom, a hint of almonds and god knows what else but it instantly perked me up. The only downer was the cost- ten rupees a cup.

Anand Café is run by a father-son duo. They both have the sort of expression that people who know what they are doing have while making the tea. The next day I discovered that they also make two types of samosas which they make in small numbers for which people wait eagerly. The place is crowded at all times. Though I have to trek for almost thirty minutes to get there from home it doesn’t seem very far away once the ginger/masala tea begins to flow down the gullet. I’m glad that I get such good tea though I cannot get Irani chai in this small town.

The Sunday/Book Fair Haul

Around this time of the year I experience, in equal measures, feelings of anxiety and also, excitement. Anxiety, at the thought of what the final number of books and magazines I must have picked up during the year comes to. Excitement, because it is the time of the year when the annual Book Fair begins which presents an opportunity to buy more books and add to the year's tally. There’s still three more days for the Book Fair to end and a week for the year to come to a close but I still haven’t begun listing the books I had hauled in during the year.

This year can be termed as the ‘Year of Conde Nast Traveler’ for me because I found the largest number of the magazine issues during the year. Almost every Sunday I am finding at least one issue, new or old, at Abids. This Sunday was no exception. I picked up just one issue, the November 2009 issue. Out of a handful of issues I bought only this issue for a good reason. Inside was a lengthy essay by Orhan Pamuk on Venice which alone is worth more than the forty rupees I paid for it. I wanted to buy all the issues the seller had but there was another interesting magazine to buy- ‘creative screenwriting’ magazine of September 2009 for which I had to pay a steep price. I’m hoping it will pay back when I finally manage to finish a screenplay I have in mind to write after I finish writing the novel. Next Sunday I plan to pick up the other issue that I had decided not to buy because of budgetary constraints.

Since one doesn’t find many books or magazines on writing or screenwriting at Abids I thought I was lucky finding the screenwriting magazine. But I was in for some more luck. One of the sellers at Abids sprang a nice surprise on me. After I picked up ‘American Families- 28 Short Stories’ from him he handed me a season pass to the Book Fair that was on. It was really a nice gesture and I paid him what he asked without bargaining for the book of short stories I picked. Later in the afternoon I decided to put the season pass to good use and dropped in at the Book Fair that was at Necklace Road. Maybe I read it wrong then but I remember reading in The New Indian Express that this year’s Book Fair would be for only four days. It turns out to be incorrect since the event was for the usual ten days, mercifully. As always, there were a couple of surprises in store at the Book Fair.

The first surprise was finding that ‘The Hindu’ had not put up a stall this year. I wonder why but I was disappointed because I always make it a point to buy the ‘Sportstar’ cap they seem to sell only at the Book Fair. Another surprise was that I couldn’t find anything interesting to buy in the five secondhand book stalls in the fair. I saw Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘Leafstorm and Other Stories’ but it was for one hundred and fifty rupees. Also, since most of the stories in it are ones that I had read in other collections I have with me, I gave the book a miss.

I went to the Book Fair again on the next day and bought a collection of short stories- ‘Pack of Cards’ by Penelope Lively that I got for thirty rupees. It has thirty four short stories and I read the first story in it, ‘Nothing Missing but the Samovar’ which was a long but delightful story. It appears a gem that I have discovered. In my next visit I plan to pick up Jay McInerney’s ‘Bright City, Bright Lights’ about which I had read a great deal because it is one of the few novels written in the second person. That is, if no one has picked it up till then.

Two Encounters

Few things in life change one’s moods than the smile of a complete stranger just when you are in the dumps. And few things make you feel sad than the sight of a grown up adult with the mind of a child. Last week I had the pleasant experience of being smiled at by someone I had never seen in my life before. It was a smile that still lingers in my mind, for it was a genuine smile from a simple soul.

Returning home after a long week at work involving traveling in dusty villages, I wanted the bus I was in to hurry up. I hadn’t seen my kid for a week and I was eager to reach home. I wanted to get back home as soon as I could but the bus had stopped. It had slowed down to a crawl in a road side village on the highway. Vendors with apples, bananas, custard apples, tomatoes and other vegetables in baskets and push carts jammed the sides of the road. I was irritated. I looked out through the window from my seat. I thought I saw someone in the crowd on the road look in my direction.

It was a tall, thin man in a white lungi, shirt and a turban tied around his head. He had a beard on his face. He raised his hand in greeting and smiled at me. At first I was confused. I thought he must have been one of the villagers who had attended one of my trainings, so I just nodded my head at him, impatient for the bus to move and looked away. From the corner of my eye I saw him raise his hand again. When I turned my head, he was still looking at me, hand still raised and a shy smile on his face. It was an innocent smile, pure and unconditional. I raised my hand to him. When the bus began to move, he waved his hand, bidding me good bye like a child. He seemed a bit different, maybe soft in the head. Normally I don’t do such things but on that day I waved back, beguiled by the man’s innocence.

My mood returned to normal and I turned my attention towards my neighbor who was beginning to irritate me again. Ever since I had got into the bus I had noticed that the old man was behaving like he owned the bus. When I had entered the bus he guided me to the seat beside him. He was lording it over the crew, calling them by their names. He was constantly giving the driver instructions: keep to the left, let the car pass, dip your lights, don’t blow the horn too long, why don’t you people wipe the windshield, and so on. The burly driver obeyed him meekly. To the conductor he told that there were vacant seats in the bus and to stop the bus when people waved at it, asked him the collections till then and so on. I was puzzled by his behavior.

It dawned upon me after sometime that he must be somehow connected with the Road Transport Corporation. My guess was right. He told me with obvious pride that he was a retired Traffic Inspector with the AP State Road Transport Corporation. I was surprised when he told me that he had retired seventeen years ago! He told me he believed in the work ethic and that the crew of the bus and others like them had joined when he was in service. He had trained and guided them hence the regard he got from them. Then he told me he was visiting his daughters in Hyderabad while two more daughters lived in the town from where he was coming. We had tea together at another stop and he offered me betel nut powder from a packet. He told me it helped pass the time. Three hours passed just like that.

Until he got down at his destination on the outskirts of Hyderabad he kept talking. He was an interesting person, a helpful, fatherly figure. I realized I had forgotten to ask him his name.