Wednesday Double Post - A Mixed Haul at Abids on Sunday & Meeting with Friends - 2

I didn’t find any Simon Brett so far and went to the next stall…hoping…I found a Harlan Coben novel, from the Myron Bolitar Series…One False Move…I have been looking for novels from this series for some time and found them too… but on at least a couple of times in the past I found the prices quoted by second-hand book sellers too much and left the books back on the shelves…so, finding One False Move at Abids for twenty rupees was indeed welcome…

As soon as I had reached the book lane, I messaged Vinod asking him where he was…my friend Pavan (familiar to the readers of my blog as Marut!!) had promised to join me at Abids and then we were to have lunch together…I was waiting for him too… and then I went on my search…I had spent almost half an hour and had found four books, but there was no response from Vinod yet…I thought he may not come in today and I continued my book search and had reached the end of the street, where a sumptuous treat awaited me in the form of two huge book piles…Rs.20 each and Rs.30 each…

As I was rooting around I saw Umashankar and Srikanth on the opposite side of the road…Uma and Sri, along with Vinod form the book hunting triumvirate that haunts Abids every Sunday morning… they too saw me and I asked where is Vinod…they said he’s following behind…and soon enough I saw him and by that time I had found another book in the Rs.20 pile I felt would make nice reading…My War with the 20^th Century by Pierre Berton…hadn’t heard the name before, but the blurb on the back cover compared Pierre Berton’s type of humour with Stephen Leacock’s…that is good enough praise for the author and the text on the cover says --  Assorted Visions, Hallucinations and other Comic Nightmares of our Time, Including Accounts of…The Great Detergent Premium Race…The Terrible Toothpaste Crisis…Goliath Tobacco’s Remarkable Comeback – and I needed no further persuasion to pick up this book…I read a couple of articles in this book after I came home and I am glad I bought this book…

By this time Pavan had arrived too and I made the introductions… and after all the greetings and pleasantries, we headed to the Irani hotel for the customary cuppa…during the cuppa Uma wanted to know what watch I was wearing and I unbuckled and showed it to him…HMT Leo…it is a rare HMT automatic watch and Uma was suitably impressed…then Pavan noticed that both Uma and Sri were wearing HMT watches…birds of a feather and that sort of thing…he he he…but of course, Vinod doesn’t wear  a watch at all!!  We have to keep a watch on him…!!

After the tea, I hung around for some more time with Pavan, while the triumvirate went back to hunt…Pavan tried to see if he could pick up something in mathematics and statistics, but he couldn’t find anything worthwhile…I already had had my fill of books, but my tummy was demanding its fill…Pavan and I then went to the Gujarati Bhojanalay near Hanuman Vyayamshala and ate like anything…aah…

After I came home I was disturbed by the missing cover on Goodbye to Elsa… I searched the book online and saw the book’s cover on amazon...was that why the cover disappeared before the book came on the streets in its second-hand avatar?  Can't say...