All three of us, Shruti, Mamoon, and I,
decided to spend the morning at Abids on Sunday, the 13th of
September. Shruti hadn’t met Vinod in a
long time. She had wanted to meet Vinod
to seek his advice and opinions on a few administrative related procedural
matters. “I want to meet Vinod and pick
his brains,” is what she’d been saying for a couple of months now. Mamoon wanted activity books and story books.
And there was a request from my teacher.
She wanted some basic letters and numbers practice books for her
grandson. I had no particular agenda
this time and anyway, my agenda-ed plans mostly never work. We also decided to have lunch, after the
books hunt, at the Gujarati Bhojanalay at Ramkote. I was mainly looking forward to that!
Umashankar and Srikanth couldn’t make it
to Abids that day. So, Vinod and we
three decided to meet at the Taj Mahal hotel for coffee, and for ice cream for
Mamoon. Shruti got enough time to pick
Vinod’s brains during the coffee session.
I kept interjecting their serious talk with my half-baked witticisms.
After their discussion, and before we
left to see books, Vinod and I did a barter … ha ha … Vinod has found Stephen Fry’s book Paperweight
the previous Sunday and had bought it … he had written in his post that he
already had a copy, but did not want to leave this good copy behind … I read
the post and raised my hand … Vinod humourously replied that he would give it
to me in exchange for an ebonite pen … I readily agreed … anything for a
Stephen Fry book … I continue to be a great fan of Stephen Fry’s work on
television … I thoroughly enjoyed watching A Little bit of Fry and Laurie, Fry
and Hugh Laurie’s half hour episodes of hilariously witty and irreverent sketches
… and also their Jeeves and Wooster … Stephen Fry was in fine form in the TV
series Absolute Power … and I hadn’t read anything written by Fry and
so I accepted this offer … Vinod had brought Paperweight (Fry writes in the introduction about
the title … self-deprecatory wit?) with him and gave it to me … I took out the
Deccan Onyx ebonite pen that I had brought for Vinod and gave it to him … he
looked surprised … “hei, I was not really serious about the exchange,” he said
… but the exchange took plae anyway … and he was happy about the pen though
…
Mamoon really came into her own once we
started the book rounds … she was excited, there was a smile on her face, and
she wanted every book … she actually waded into the rows of books on the
pavement … I had to tell her to be a bit careful lest she trampled on the
books …
She looked at colouring books, story
books, activity books, and Shruti helped her in choosing … she picked up a lot
of story books and put them back … she wanted story books that had not more
than two to three lines in a page and full of pictures … some books had pages
full of lines … some books had only pictures … very few books fit her criteria …
Then came the craft books, which were
again carefully chosen by Shruti … the colouring books were chosen by Mamoon …
and there were some English activity books too … Mamoon was able to put
together around a dozen books … and she was very pleased … she got to choose,
you see …
And when I asked her if she liked and enjoyed her morning at Abids
Sunday book market … she gave a big smile and said a loud ‘yes’ … she also said
she’d like to visit Abids again …
It was nearing 1 o’ clock and by then
clouds had started gathering and we felt rain drops … Vinod had come on his
bike and the clouds and rain drops gave him cause for worry and he bid us a
reluctant adieu and left … we lingered on for a few more minutes … Shruti and
Mamoon did some girl girl shopping … and by that time my tummy was growling …
we all went to the Gujarati Bhojanalay for lunch … the ghee-smeared rotis were outstanding,
as usual … the cabbage dish was too good … the dal and the peas curry were yum
yum … and there was that raw green chilly soaked in tamarind or something and
salt … and jaggery … and yummy buttermilk … and curd … and we ate like anything
… (I will take photos the next time I visit this place … slipped my mind, I
should say … or maybe my hunger and the mouth-watering
fare made me oblivious to anything …. )