The Sunday and Other Lockdown Hauls

Last Sunday, since the lockdown was relaxed for shops to open, I felt there could be a possibility of the second hand booksellers making an appearance at Abids after almost two months. But next day was Ramzan and most of these sellers would be preparing to celebrate it and besides the regular stores at Abids would be open for Ramzan shopping however little it may be. All these I felt would also mean that the booksellers would not be there at Abids.

So when I went to Abids on Sunday morning there was no one except two sellers. One was just setting up shop putting pirated copies of the latest bestsellers on a wooden shelf, and another near the Head Post Office with a handful of books for children and textbooks. I was disappointed but there was one hope. On the way to Abids I had noticed at a corner of the RTC X Roads junction the usual bookseller who has his second hand books there every Sunday. It was on the other side of the road and I thought I would take a look on the way back. So I rushed there with a desperation I hadn’t felt since a long time. There were a few novels and I thought I would pick up at least one book. I saw a nice copy of ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy that was double the thickness of a brick that I picked up. Then I saw a copy of ‘If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him’ by Sheldon B. Kopp that I also picked up along with a copy of ‘Ithiyamala’ a collection of stories from Kerala published by CBT. I got all these three books for two hundred and fifty rupees.

Just before I left the seller told me he would get more books the next day since the store before which he kept his books would be closed on account of Ramzan. I decided I would drop in the next day too. So Monday morning I was out again in search of books but before stopping at RTC X Roads I decided to go up to Chikkadpally where I had seen someone selling tea before a hotel. It had been a long, long time since I had tasted tea in a hotel so I stopped there. Then on the way back I saw another seller at Chikkadpally who had a few books on the pavement. I found a nice copy of ‘Anywhere But Here’ by Mona Simpson that I decided to buy. However I did not find anything interesting with the seller at the RTC X Roads.

On Wednesday I had to go to my Institute in Jubilee Hills though we are closed due to the Lockdown until the end of the month. In the evening while returning I spotted a board that said ‘Book Sale’ near the MacDonalds outlet near the Jubilee Hills Police Station. I had crossed it by the time my mind registered it so I took a U turn and came back. Another board said each book was for Rs 100. I went in and looked around. There were a few titles worth buying but it was a beautiful copy of ‘A Month in the Country’ by JL Carr that I picked up. Only last week I had seen many tweets about this title so I bought it. It is just eighty five pages long so I managed to read it today in a couple of hours. It is a lovely book.

I am quite positive that next Sunday the second hand book sellers would be out in full strength at Abids. See you there if you are in Hyderabad.

A Pandemic Novel

Since a couple of years I have been drawn to titles by Indian writers originally in English and also those translated into English, especially those writers I haven’t heard about before and also little known names. I have novels by Uma Vasudev, Nergis Dalal, Mayah Balse, Leena Dhingra, Veena Nagpal and such writers not much discussed anywhere. To avoid taking a nap in the afternoon during the lockdown I am reading books by these writers most of which are around two hundred pages and therefore short enough to complete in a couple of hours.

But there is a novel that I am able, with great difficulty at that, to read only a few pages a day. It is ‘Trapped’ by Narendrapal Singh, originally in Punjabi. I had found it sometime last year I reckon and had bought it after seeing it with the same seller for a few months. I did not want to buy it for some reason other than the illustration on the cover. I thought I would be missing a great book so I bought it.

On the cover of’Trapped’ it says it has won the Sahitya Akademi award and also was banned in Punjab for obscenity. It won the Sahitya Akademi alright though I do not find anything in the novel deserving of that award. Then there’s no obscenity either. But what got me interested was that in the novel about a Punjabi guy trapped in the airport at New York while waiting for his American girl friend, there’s a pandemic that sweeps around the world at the same time. It is called ‘Hemi Parisec’ and though it was not fatal the symptoms were that the left side of the person was paralysed, the person experienced blackouts. But it caused enough alarm for the US and the USSR to get worried about it, especially the President of the US, and not surprisingly it is in India that the cure for it is found.

It is a bizarre cure, and two doctors in Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh discover it. Apparently, people in areas on either side of the Tropic of Cancer are not affected by it, and only such area in India is free of Hemi Parisec. It seems that the banyan trees are somehow related to the cure of this virus. The Swedish Academy hands out two Special Nobel Prizes for these two doctors! It is an outlandish story and I am yet to finish the novel.
More about it after I am done with the novel.

The Lockdown Reading

I had been dreaming of something like this, long days at home with nothing to do except read all the time. So ever since the Lockdown began I have done exactly what I dreamt of except that I did not read all the time. I spent a major part of the day reading, though and have managed to read more than twenty eight books so far from March 23. Here is the list divided into two categories: Books that took me more than a couple of days to finish, and books I read in half a day.

1. ‘Something for the Pain’ by Gerald Murnane
2. ‘Principles of Literary Criticism’ by IA Richards- Boring
3. ‘The Long Firm’ by Jake Arnott
4. ‘Nine Faces of Kenya’ by Elspeth Huxley
5. ‘Our Kind of Traitor’ by John Le Carre
6. ‘The Dirty Life’ by Kristin Kimball
7. ‘Dear Life’ by Alice Munro
8. ‘The Secret Lovers’ by Charles McCarry
9. ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again’ by David Foster Wallace
10. ‘Break, Blow, , Burn’ by Camilla Paglia
11. ‘Under the Dragon’ by Rory Maclean
12. ‘Everywhere I Look’ by Helen Garner
13. ‘The Old Forest and Other Stories’ by Peter Taylor
14. ‘And Why Not’ by Barry Norman
15. ‘Pyada’ by Surendra Mohan Pathan (Hindi)
16. ‘The Plains’ by Gerald Murnane

The Half Day Reads:
Since they were not more than two hundred pages I would sit down after lunch and finish these books before I went to sleep. I got the idea half way through or I would have read only those books I could finish in half a day from the beginning of the Lockdown.

1. ‘Sunday at the Pool in Kigali’ by Gil Courtemanche
2. ‘The Mystic Masseur’ by V.S. Naipaul
3. ‘This Side of Paradise’ by Scott F. Fitzgerald
4. ‘The Root of His Evil’ by James.M. Cain
5. ‘The Search Warrant’ by Patrick Modiano
6. ‘A Man, A Home, and A World’ by Jayakanthan S
7. ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ by Muriel Spark
8. ‘Bullitt’ by Robert L. Pike
9. ‘Yakshi’ by Malayatoor Ramakrishnan
10. ‘The Bang Bang Birds’ by Adam Diment
11. ‘Tim’ by Colleen McCullough
12. ‘Samskara’ by U.R. Ananthamurthy

Still Reading
1. ‘Of Human Bondage’ by Somerset Maugham
2. ‘Trapped’ by Narendrapal Singh
3. ‘So Many Books So Little Time’ by Sara Nelson

I am glad I got read so many books. I enjoyed reading all these books except ‘Principles of Literary Criticism’ which was a tough read, and ‘Trapped’ by Narendrapal Singh that I have yet to finish is one of the most stupid books I’ve ever read, and I don’t know why I want to read it until the end. I reckon I will read another half a dozen books before the Lockdown ends here.

The One and Only Dave Barry

There are humour writers and then there’s Dave Barry. He is perhaps the only humour writer who won the Pulitzer Prize. Personally I rate him as the funniest writer in the world whose articles make me almost roll on the floor laughing. Discovering Dave Barry’s columns was one of the luckiest things in my life.

I first discovered Dave Barry’s writings in ‘The Asian Age’ newspaper that carried his columns in its Sunday editions. I used to eagerly look forward to buy the Sunday’s Asian Age that in those days used to reach Hyderabad the next day. His goofy humour appealed to me and I was glad to learn that there was someone who could write what would appear to others as silly humour. I used to laugh uncontrollably and still do whenever I read his articles. It is another thing that there are very few things that can make me laugh in that manner.

I did not realize Dave Barry also wrote books until I accidentally found a copy of ‘Dave Barry Does Japan’ in the Gangarams store in Hyderabad. It was in a discount shelf that I chanced upon this wonderful and extremely funny book. I was so happy to find it that I began to search for his other titles that were listed inside the book. Not very long after that I found a hard cover copy of ‘Dave Barry Turns 40’. Over the years I have bought more than a dozen copies of this title and also other Dave Barry titles. Another Dave Barry that I have multiple copies was ‘Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits’ and as the title says it has some of Dave Barry’s funniest pieces.

Along the way I found ‘Dave Barry is Not Making This Up’ and also ‘Dave Barry is Not Taking This Sitting Down’ and his other titles. I was the happiest when I found a nice copy of ‘Dave Barry’s Guide to Guys’ and later a beautiful hardcover copy of ‘Dave Barry’s Guide to Life’. I am finding it difficult to say how incredibly funny Dave Barry is. Others may find his humour to be juvenile but I think his humour is in a different class in itself.

Unable to bear the tension of waiting for his new title to turn up in the bookstores here and one would never find copies of Dave Barry titles in any store since I used to find them second hand on the pavements or the second hand book stores. I asked a relative in the US who was visiting to get me a copy of ‘Boogers are My Beat’ and my brother who also stays in the US brought ‘Dave Barry’s Money Secrets’. I have found almost all books written by Dave Barry except a couple like ‘Claw Your Way to the Top’ and another title I am not able to recollect now.
So far I have managed to find almost two dozen of his titles. It is interesting that he also wrote two novels one of which was ‘Big Trouble’ that I did not particularly like. But I love all his other books that I think are some of the best cures for bad moods.

How It All Began

In the early years I wasn’t such a regular visitor to the Abids Sunday second hand book market. I went occasionally when I was in town because I was posted in a place quite far away from Hyderabad. In those days I used to come home only during the weekends. With just one day- Sunday- of holiday I just couldn’t find the time to go to Abids as I had to catch up with friends, get the laundry done, run other errands and not to mention, get some rest after a week’s hectic work.

Also, I did not buy books at Abids with the intention of starting a collection. I bought the books only to read them. So I bought only those books I thought might be an interesting read. I do not remember many of the titles I bought in those early years. Later I came to know about le Carre, Len Deighton, Bill Bryson, Dave Barry and began to look for their titles. I would come across many books by Indian writers but at that time I foolishly believed that their books were no good so I did not buy many books by Indian writers. Much, much later after it dawned on me that Indian authors writing in English were good, and after I began to read the reviews in LR I began to buy such titles like ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy, ‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie and so on.

Pradeep Sebastian, the bibliomane as he would like to refer to himself, columnist and author of ‘The Groaning Shelf,’ and one of my favourite books is my chief inspiration. It is through reading his column in The Hindu’s ‘Literary Review’ that I came to know about several wonderful writers and books that I would otherwise have not known. I used to cut out his columns and preserve them and in fact I still have a few cuttings including the one where he wrote about Bill Bryson. It was in his columns also that I first read about Anne Fadiman’s ‘Ex-libris’ that I was lucky enough to find almost a decade after first reading about it. ‘The Groaning Shelf’ by Pradeep Sebastian is perhaps the first book on books in India. It is a collection of his various columns where he talks about books, printing, type and so on. I love TGS so much that I have snapped almost every copy of TGS that I have come across. I have two brand new copies and also three second hand copies that I have found at various times.

So far I must have bought a few thousand books in the almost three decades that I've been collecting books. I am 57 now and I have no idea how many more books I will buy.

Summer of '42 by Herman Raucher

Decades ago when I was in my early twenties and in a Harold Robbins-Sidney Sheldon-Robert Ludlum-Alistair Maclean phase a friend gave me a copy of ‘Summer of '42’ by Herman Raucher. It remained unread for nearly a decade and half because I thought it wouldn’t be so interesting whatever my friend might have told me. When I finally read it, (why, I don’t know) I realized how incredibly stupid I had been to have not read that gem of a book for so long. But having read it I experienced a strange tender feeling that overcomes me whenever I happen to see the cover of the book. It takes its place in a separate shelf I have filled with my favorite titles that I treasure and never let go out of my sight.

For several years it was the only copy I had. My friend did not ask for it, and I did not want to return it to her. I found a second copy at Abids that had the same cover. I do not remember now when I found this second copy. But sometime in July of 2010 I found my third copy of this classic. This too had the same cover and I got it for just twenty rupees.

Over the years I reread ‘Summer of '42’ several times, and I reread it only recently a couple of months back and experienced the same feelings I had when I read it the first time decades back.

The Lockdown Reads

When I first heard about the lockdown my first reaction was of shock and disbelief. The first thing i thought was that i wouldn't be able to go to Abids for more than three Sundays to look for books. The next thought was how could anyone stay at home for so long without going mad. But soon I realized that it was exactly the sort of break every bibliophile dreams about- hours and hours to read and read. I picked up the first book I spotted on my shelf- I Dreamed of Africa by Kuki Gallmann. It was a wonderful account of the author’s life in Kenya and of course there are some gut-wrenching incidents that brought tears to my eyes. She loses her husband in an accident and her son to a snake bite. In it I read about some people she met who helped her and were doing wonderful work in wildlife conservation in that beautiful country. I finished the book in a day and half.

Apart from reading another thing I resolved to do during the lockdown was to sort my bookshelves and rearrange all the books. After one spell of sorting I found the copy of ‘Nine Faces of Kenya’ by Elspeth Huxley that I had bought some time back. I wanted to read it since it was about Kenya that I had just read about in ‘I Dreamed of Africa’ and in the first few pages itself I came across the same persons and places that Kuki Gallman wrote about – Richard Leakey and also places like Naivasha.

In another pile I saw the copy of ‘A Devil’s Chaplain’ by Richard Dawkins that I had kept aside a long time back to read but had forgotten. Idly I looked at the contents page and saw that some of the essays were about Africa. When I read the essays I was quite surprised to find the names of Richard Leakey, and also , Iain Douglas-Hamilton that I had read about in ‘I Dreamed of Africa’ by Kuki Gallmann. The surprise was because I had come across them so soon after reading them first.

The Sunday Haul (on 15-03-2020)

The previous Sunday I had missed my trip to the Abids book bazaar as I was travelling and not in town. I was counting the days for the next Sunday. But on Saturday which was a government holiday because it was the second Saturday of the month I went out for a routine I follow on Saturdays. At a newspaper vendor in Lakdikapul I buy ‘Mint’, ‘Business Line’ and ‘Business Standard’ for the Saturday supplements that I go through over a cup of chai in an Irani that is right beside the vendor’s. Afterwards I walked over to a second hand bookseller who spreads out a few books on the pavement. There I saw a copy of ‘If I Should Die Before I Wake’ by Michelle Morris that I bought.

On the next day, Sunday, I was at Abids. Around a decade ago, I guess, I found a nice copy of ‘Paro: Dreams of Passion’ by Namita Gokhale that I read soon after. I was glad I found it because reading it convinced me that wonderful stories have been written by women writers in the seventies. Last Sunday I found another copy of the same title but the copy I found was a hardcover one, with the jacket and the cover was worth every rupee of the hundred rupees I paid for it. The other thing was that it seemed to be a first edition and published in 1984 by Chatto & Windus, The Hogarth Press, London. On the back was a black and white photograph of the author.

I am aware that there are some very good writers writing wonderful books in regional languages and I am also amazed at how so few of them are translated into other languages especially English. It isn’t always possible to get books by such writers in the original language even if you are aware of the writer. There are many writers you don't know anything about- not their names and not even titles of their books. I always try to buy translated works if I cannot find them in the original language if they are in Telugu or Hindi, two languages I can read and write. Last Sunday at Abids I came across a book with an attractive cover. It had all the appearance of those books that were published by Indian publishing houses in the seventies. The title on the cover said ‘Against Myself and Other Stories’ by Rajee Seth. It was a slim volume of just eighty two pages containing eleven short stories written by Rajee Seth and translated into English by Jasjit Purewal.

On the way home at Chikkadpally at one of the sellers I saw a stack of books that I sifted through and found two titles worth picking up. I am embarrassed to confess that I haven’t read ‘Dr Zhivago’ by Boris Pasternak so far except for a few short stories. I found a copy of ‘Safe Conduct’ by Boris Pasternak that has ‘an autobiography, poems, and short stories’ as it says on the cover. ‘Safe Conduct’ is the autobiography, Aerial Ways, Letters from Tula, and The Childhood of Luvers are the three short stories in it as well as more than thirty poems.

I had found few titles of James Baldwin though I am yet to read them. In the same stack where I found ‘Safe Conduct’ by Boris Pasternak I found a copy of ‘Nobody Knows My Name’ by James Baldwin. It is a collection of his essays published in various places. I got these two books for only twenty five rupees each. I was glad that the Sunday at Abids yielded a good haul.

Travel Diaries- Kolhapur

Last Sunday I traveled to Kolhapur with the spouse in tow. Here are some of the vignettes from that two day trip. It was the second time I saw the pigeons right inside the terminal at the RGIA in Hyderabad, and one of them sat down on the table as if waiting for breakfast.

The view from one of the fortifications in Panhala was fantastic, with the view stretching to scores of miles ahead.

Some bare trees on a winding road.

The spouse was doing some last minute shopping and I noticed a doorway.

We reached the Rankala lake just as the sun was setting.

Of course I tasted the famed Kolhapur mutton curry and also Tambda rassa. The airport at Kolhapur is small but neat. The people were friendly in the town and no one seemed in a hurry to get anywhere. I had fantasies of living there. This is the view outside the hotel where we stayed.

The Sunday Haul (on 01-03-2020)

My kid joined a software company recently. Though I never tried to understand or know what he studied in college I felt it would a good idea to get to know something about software after I saw a copy of ‘Dreaming in Code’ by Scott Rosenberg. I have already started reading it and just got to know about source code, compilers, and such jargon. I don’t know of what use it would be to me to read this book but then I read all kinds of books in the belief there’s something to learn from every book.

I remember writing down the name Cesare Pavese a long time ago in a notebook after reading about the writer someplace I don’t remember now. It was a name difficult to forget because I had not heard of it before. So when I saw the name again on the cover of a book I saw at Abids I picked it up for a closer look and then bought it. It was a beautiful copy of ‘The Devil in the Hills’ by Cesare Pavese. The cover reminded me of a title by Jean Giono.

Sometimes it is difficult to remember all the names of writers who’ve either won literary prizes/awards or on the short list but a name like Laszlo Krasnahorkai is difficult to forget. The third title I found at Abids was a copy of ‘Satantango’ by Laszlo Krasnahorkai.

The fourth book in the haul I found at Chikkadpally. I remember reading about ‘Death in Venice’ by Thomas Mann somewhere that I cannot recollect now. I had bought not one but two copies of ‘The Magic Mountain’ by Thomas Mann but was looking for his ‘Death in Venice’ that I found last Sunday. I paid only thirty rupees for it.