Magical Mornings

This is the third month in a row I am doing the early Sunday morning Necklace Road routine. I've been tempted to do it every Sunday but have resisted it so far. Anything you enjoy occasionally loses its magic if done too often. The magic won't be there so I am going there only once a month. As usual, it was magical. Though I was a wee bit late and the sun was just rising, it was tranquil and very beautiful.

One thing I've found during my travels is that it pays to spend the early hours in picturesque locales. The tranquillity of the hour before the dawn is multiplied in such places. I've done it several times while I was in the Andamans and also while on a trip to Goa a couple of years back. I've spent the early mornings on lonely beaches all by myself soaking in the silence. There is nothing like it to recharge the soul. The Necklace Road is as scenic a place as any in Hyderabad to do such a thing.

The lake surface shimmered like it was scattered with diamonds as the sun rose from behind the waters. It was totally quiet, just the right setting for introspection. I sat watching the sun rise slowly and grow brighter. Adding to the magic of the morning was a small, fluffy white pup that stopped following its master and stood before me. It sat on its haunches a little away from my cement bench and gave me a quizzical look, cocking its head to one side. It looked at me for a few moments and then got up to go. It trundled a few steps forward and turned around to give me another look before scampering away to its master. It was as if it was worried why I was all alone by myself.

After sometime I bought a couple of Sunday papers at the MLA Quarters and spent the next one hour poring through the papers from end to end while sipping Irani chai in Adarsh Restaurant. It felt good, this Necklace Road routine of mine that I now want to make a regular habit. It puts me in a good mood, and the world appears a nice place on such mornings.

The Sunday Haul- New Yorker Magazine

Thanks to the Abids booksellers I can claim to have read magazines like ‘New Yorker’, ‘The Atlantic’ and such high brow magazines that are hard to find otherwise. It is a bit unusual to find the latest issues of such magazines though I had been extremely lucky in the past. This Sunday I found the September 1, 2008 issue of ‘The New Yorker’ that I got for only ten rupees. Apart from the terrific cartoons, the magazine usually carries articles and review by well-known writers. This issue had John Updike’s take on Max Factor, the make-up magnate.

The magazine was the only find this Sunday, but there were other books I now wish I had picked up. One was ‘The Diary of a Mad Housewife’ (I don’t remember the author’s name but it was a Penguin imprint) and another was Peter Matthiessen’s ‘Snow Leopard’. I have this book but the copy I saw on Sunday seemed a different edition. I had this book for just twenty bucks in the past, but I knew the seller with whom I saw the book on Sunday wasn’t the sort to sell it for less than a hundred rupees so I did not even ask. But now I wish I had asked the price at least. It appeared to be a good copy and if it is there next week, I might pick it up.

With Diwali only days away, all the regular shops at Abids were open forcing the bookseller to move away to nooks and crannies. But there were more book sellers this Sunday than is usual on such days. I had seen a book by Helene Hanff called ’84 Charing Cross’ or something like that sometime last month at Abids before the festival shopping season began. . I remember the book was reviewed in “Literary Review” of The Hindu a couple of years ago. It is something about a book collector and a bookstore. I wish I had picked up the book the day I saw it. If it is there next week then I will add it to my collection.

At a Poetry Reading

There are certain kinds of people I am totally in awe of like those who are good at mathematics and those who write poetry. That is because I can neither solve problems nor write poems. However, when I was very young, I was infatuated by a pretty girl and I spurted poetry at every occasion, day and night. When the scales fell from my eyes the poetry dried up inside me. It is easy, especially when one is infatuated, to write a few lines and call it poetry. But writing the sort of poetry that does something to the heart is very difficult which is one reason I don’t write any.

Writing poetry may not be my cup of tea but I love to read it. In fact, the first book I bought years ago was an anthology of poetry that I still have with me and read occasionally when I feel low. The book has poems by Edna Vincent Millay, ee cummings, Hart Crane and others whose names have stuck in my mind since then. Later on I got to read the Indian poets- AK Ramanujan, Keki Daruwala, Gieve Patel, Nissim Ezekiel and others. Recently I had been to the poetry readings by Anjum Hasan and Sridala Swami, and through her messages I came to know about the Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust and the reading of his poetry by Jeet Thayil and Sridala Swami at the Hyderabad Central University on Saturday.

This month’s Literary Review of “The Hindu’ had a review of ’60 Indian Poets’, an anthology of poetry edited by Jeet Thayil. The reviewer mentioned many names in the anthology but seems to have left out Srinivas Rayaprol and Sridala Swami, both Hyderabad based poets. I had heard of Rayaprol but haven’t read his poems. (One reason why he was not so well known was that he was from Secunderabad.) But when I heard them read out at the reading on Saturday I realized how good a poet he was. I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that he was a Chief Engineer with the AP Government which goes to show that not all who work for the Government are dull.

The reading was at Hyderabad Central University, which is quite far away from the city, and I was surprised to see that there were more than a hundred people gathered for the event. It was a wonderful an hour and half I spent in that sylvan campus listening to the poetry of Jeet Thayil. Both the poets, Thayil and Sridala Swami read Rayaprol’s poetry in the way only poets can read out another poet’s work. It was pure pleasure listening to the poems and the audience was very appreciative. In the audience were big names like Meenakshi Mukherjee, Sachidananda Mohanty, Sudhakar Marathe and also Shankar Melkote.

There was an announcement of some kind of a prize for upcoming poets beginning next year. I hope it generates a good response like the reading.

Hyderabad Gets Yet Another New Bookstore

It isn’t even wholly two months since Hyderabad got a new bookstore (Books & Beyond) and already there’s yet another bookstore that’s popped up about ten days back. Odyssey’s latest store is the newest bookstore Hyderabad’s got and it is easily the biggest bookstore I’ve seen. I was there on Tuesday though I had a glimpse of it from the outside a day before it opened. It is a couple of floors, the place and on one of them is the bookstore.

It was bigger than anything I’ve seen before with acres and acres of space as far as the eye could see. But for all that space there weren’t enough books filling it up. The shelves came up to shoulder level which gave the store a sense of even more space but they had nothing much different from what one could find at other stores. To be fair, all bookstores more or less stock the same titles but this seemed to have even fewer titles than a normal bookstore. I was disappointed with the choice on display. I couldn’t find a single Elmore Leonard title. Just Books and even Crossword have his titles. Too bad Odyssey failed my Elmore Leonard test.

But there was one book that made up for all the disappointment. Till date I haven’t seen a book on fountain pens in any store either in Hyderabad or anywhere in the other cities I’ve been. But last year I had found one in the Book Fair but in a stall selling second hand books. The book was Cartier’s coffee table book on fountain pens titled ‘Art of Writing’. When I looked at the price on the back I was glad. It was Rs 2700/- whereas I had picked up the same book (with a thin cardboard case) for Rs 350. There’s the sticker on the book in the picture. I had got the book for nearly one eighth’s of its regular price. Such are the joys of second hand book hunts.

There’s a Café Coffee Day outlet inside the new Odyssey bookstore, but without a separate enclosure it looks odd. ‘Brio’ at Crossword is really nice because it is separated from the store quite subtly. I hope they do something about it. If not CCD, then I was impressed by the range of fountain pens in the stationery store one floor down. There were Waterman and other brands. But since I don’t buy any fountain pen that doesn’t cost me a lakh rupees I did not find any to suit my range. I exited with neither book nor fountain pen in hand. Some day I will visit the store again. But I really wonder how many bookstores Hyderabad's got?

The Sunday Haul: Two More Books

Another Sunday, another visit to Abids. But this Sunday morning I was again on chauffeur duty on the Honda City. I was to receive a VIP- my mom. She was returning to Hyderabad after a longish stay in Delhi with another of my brother, who, incidentally, drives a Toyota Corolla. I had to go all the way to Shamshabad in the morning and by the time we were home it was nearly two in the afternoon. I was in Abids in the afternoon when the crowds are a bit thin. But with Diwali only days away, the shoppers were in full swing at the regular shops.

The first find was a book I had missed buying in the past. It was Groucho Marx’s ‘Groucho and Me’, supposed to be his autobiography. I have only read about how funny the Marx brothers are but haven’t read any of their writings. This appeared very funny though from what little I read from the yellowing pages. I got the ancient looking smallish book for twenty rupees.

The other find was Isabel Allende’s ‘Portrait in Sepia.’ Allende is another writer I had heard a lot about and I had in fact seen some of her books at Abids but did not buy them. This Sunday I somehow picked up her book hoping it would be a good read because somewhere inside it was stated that she was one of the world’s bestselling writers. Also, there was a poem from Pablo Neruda’s ‘End of the World’, in the beginning:

And that’s why I have to go back
to so many places in the future,
there to find myself
and constantly examine myself
with no witness but the moon
and then whistle with joy,
ambling over rocks and clods of earth,
with no task but to live,
with no family but the road.

I got the book which was in a fairly good condition for only twenty rupees. With these two books in hand I sat in the Grand and had bun-maska with tea. That was how this Sunday’s foray into Abids ended.

At the Airshow

Once again it has been proved that Hyderabadis are big time suckers. It takes just the promise of a little 'tamasha' to draw hordes of Hyderabadis. I was part of the hordes that descended on the Begumpet airport on Saturday to gawk at the airplanes. Ever since I bought the 'Flight Stimulator' game for my kid, his interest in flying and planes has reached sky high levels. It was impossible to avoid taking him there. Also, like any other kid I too grew up dreaming about planes and flying. I bunked office on Saturday and my kid bunked shool to go to the Aviation Expo 2008. What a show it was!

After the 'attention diversion' gangs, the 'gold polishing' gangs that have been conning Hyderabadis regularly, it seems to be the turn of FICCI to take us for a massive ride that many of us will remember all our lives. We stood in a line for a couple of hours just to get in. It was damn hot but luckily we had caps and a water bottle with us. Apart from this, another smart decision was coming early to the airport- we could park and get tickets easily. Even then we had to wait for almost two hours to get in and to catch a glimpse of just half a dozen aircraft on display. Of them only three were planes and the rest were choppers. There was no airshow, only a lone plane that did some basic manoeuvres and disappeared.

It was surprising to see aged persons at the show. There were lots of them shuffling along slowly. Then there were entire families fully equipped with lunch boxes and water bottles. Then there were some dressed as if they were flying to a fashion show. There were all kinds of gawkers. One guy stopped me after we emerged out an hour later and breathlessly asked me if they were allowing people to get inside the 'flight' which is Hyderabadi for 'airplane.' His face fell when I told him there were barricades all around the aircraft.

The Gulfstream GC 450 was just the sort of jet I had in mind to buy if I had a couple of million dollars in my wallet but after paying the three hundred for tickets I had very little left. So I did the only thing possible in that situation- I took its picture. That was the only exotic aircraft I found interesting. The choppers were routine so were the commercial aircraft. Inside, the stalls it was too crowded to look around. It was really a disappointment not to see the A 380. The airshow that was held a couple of years earlier was far less crowded and a lot more interesting than this year's show.

It is being touted as the biggest traffic jam Hyderabad has experienced, but we were lucky to get away just as the jam was building up. The traffic was stuck for hours together until seven in the evening I read today in the papers. But that won't deter Hyderabadis from rushing to the next tamasha that someone will inevitably come up sooner or later. There's never enough drama for us Hyderabadis.

Rereading 'Literary Review'

It is exactly two weeks since the last issue of 'Literary Review' and I have already read through it end to end quite a number of times. I am already looking forward to the next month's because what with the Booker going to someone from India, there will be really a lot to read about Indian writing and so on. A lot of people will hold forth on the writing scene in India, which in my opinion, is just unfolding. There's a lot to come, apart from my book, which, I am beginning to think only two people would get to read if I don't begin the revision soon enough.

In the current issue of 'Literary Review' there wasn't much that was interesting. There was a sort of write-up-cum- interview with Anita Desai. Apart from it, the only interesting article in it was by Vijay Nair about literary collaborations between famous writers. If I were to choose a writer to be my mentor then I guess I would go for Pico Iyer because I really like his writing. His observations and analysis are brilliant. I'd give anything to be told something about writing by him. But then, he lives in Japan which makes it quite impossible.

Another interesting mentor-pupil combination was the one between John Gardner and Raymond Carver. I have this habit of jotting down random bits of trivia, titles of books others recommend in their articles, on the back of my notebook. While flipping through an old notebook I read that I had written down the title of Raymond Carver's 'Fires' which I had read about in the 'Endpaper' column in the March issue of 'Literary Review.' I took it out once again and read the column. I had found 'Fires' sometime last month at Abids. Raymond Carver himself was a mentor for another writer- Jim McInerney.

All this makes me impatient for the next month's issue of 'Literary Review,' that will be out only on the second of November. Till then I have to make do with rereading the old issues which isn't such a bad idea.

Festival of Potholes

It was in the news that the municipal engineers are not going to repair the roads in Hyderabad until the fifteenth of next month. It means that Potholes in Hyderabad have time until the middle of November to attain as enormous a size as they can on their own after which the municipal engineers take over. The municipal engineers, under the pretext of road repairs, will then get to work and endeavour to further increase the size as well as the number of the potholes to the maximum extent they can with all the men and machinery at their disposal. Which means it is going to be a truly lovely Diwali ahead for us Hyderabadi motorists, especially those who drive two wheelers.

In crazy moments I get the idea that the real purpose behind the mission to the moon our space scientists are planning is not to study the moon, but to see if they can actually spot the potholes on our roads from up there. But if it isn’t their purpose, I really hope they include it as part of their mission. I'll bet we can spot the potholes on Hyderabad roads from the moon and I will also bet we can do so without using telescopes or such things.

The municipal engineers are doing all they can to fill our lives with bigger and bigger potholes as if we do not have enough problems of our own to contend with. Thank you, gentlemen. May your tribe increase. We Hyderabadis feel truly blessed you have chosen to work for GHMC.

New Bookstores and Writers in Hyderabad

It is quite surprising but a very welcome development that another new bookstore has opened in Hyderabad while all around there is news of the economy taking a beating. Odyssey has opened its latest branch in Jubilee Hills last Friday. From what I heard about it, the store could easily be the biggest bookstore in Hyderabad. It is five stories it seems, and covers ten thousand square feet. I had only a glimpse of the store from outside sometime last Thursday. Through the glass I could see people milling around inside getting ready for the opening the next day. There was a book reading on Saturday there by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan but I had to miss it.

Sometime soon I am going to drop in at ‘Odyssey’ at Jubilee Hills and check the store out leisurely. I also heard that Crossword is going to have an outlet at the new mall- GVK One- coming up on the Banjara Hills Road. Crossword already has three or four stores in Hyderabad. Odyssey has around four stores. Askhara has four branches here. The city is literally filling up with bookstores. But I wish Landmark and Oxford had branches in Hyderabad. More and more bookstores in Hyderabad means only one thing- Hyderabadis are beginning to take reading quite seriously.

Within walking distance from my office, right behind the SBI’s Gunfoundry office, there’s a new bookstore that opened recently- Central Book Store. It was earlier a wholesale book distributors' but now they’ve moved into retail. It isn’t really a bookstore but it has enough titles of fiction and non-fiction stacked up to be called a bookstore. There’s more stationery there than books but I don’t really mind. I picked up a simple and elegant notebook of Seagull brand the other day. It was quite good looking and was also affordable, priced under thirty rupees.

I am happy there are many new bookstores and also second hand bookstores in Hyderabad. Hyderabadis seem to be reading books but not many seem to be writing any. I am not exactly happy with the writing scene here. There are hardly any well known writers Hyderabad has thrown up. Narendra Luther is one but very few outside Hyderabad know him. The only other published writers I know are Srivatsan and Hari, my friend. Sometimes it is disappointing that there aren’t more than half a dozen published writers in Hyderabad.

Sunday Haul- Two Finds

Perhaps it was the changing weather or all the outside food I had during the past week, my health seemed to have taken a beating during the past couple of days. As if that was not enough, my sinus allergy too kicked in. And when my sinus allergy kicks in I don’t step out, for reasons of public safety. I get massive sneezing spells that would rock the foundations of buildings so I stayed put at home. It was so bad I had to miss a book reading on Saturday. But on Sunday I couldn’t hold myself back from visiting Abids. It turned out to be a good decision because the foray yielded two good finds.

Bill Bryson is one of the funniest writers I’ve ever read, of course, after Dave Barry. So when I spotted one of his best books ‘The Lost Continent’ I picked it up. It was only ten rupees so I had no choice but to buy it even though I already have a copy at home. It begins with his classic line-‘ I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.’ The whole book is peppered with such great oneliners. Though the cover was a bit damaged, on the whole it was a good, readable copy. Someone just got lucky.

Later I went to the Grand Hotel near GPO for a cup of Irani tea. I spent the whole time watching the guy at the counter slice round buns into half. There were about fifty buns on the counter and a plate filled with a mountain of butter. The guy proceeded to butter the slices expertly with a long steel knife. I was tempted to try one but I was already half way through my cup of tea. There appeared to be a large demand of the stuff at Grand because there were more buns in the counters than I could count. After finishing my tea I went to the seller beside GPO and found my second book.

I had found Natalie Goldberg’s oft recommended book on writing- 'Writing Down the Bones,' sometime last year at a sale. Recently I had read about her other book- 'Wild Mind.' It was this book I found on Sunday. I had to shell out fifty rupees for the book which had a torn cover but since it was a book on writing I couldn’t let it go. Someday I hope to read both her books on writing and learn something.