Serendipities on a Sunday …

Last Sunday’s (18 February 2017) The Hindu Literary Review was enveloped in a cloud of mystery.  And along the way, mystery met serendipity …

The Hindu Literary Review has always been a favourite and on the Sundays that they arrive, I usually end up with a book wish-list.  But it is not always that the wish-list is fulfilled, sometimes I lose interest, sometimes I feel I should wait for some more time, and so the books in the list gets scattered.  Some survive and move from wish list to cart.  And from cart to home takes some more time. 

And so, my cart on amazon always has some books waiting for the click.  I am just waiting for the right moment and then it is all systems go … go … go … yeah, buying books is like a military operation.  So, on Sunday, I open the Literary Review and the bottom of the first page carried a review of Zac O’Yeah’s Tropical Detective: A Hari Majestic Mystery.  I liked this … waah, review of crime fiction!  This is the third in Zac O’Yeah’s Hari Detective series.  I had always wanted to read the first and the second, but somehow missed them.  The reviews and feedback have all been good for these two.  And recently I saw that the third in the series is also released and with great fanfare, I dropped all three in my shopping cart.  I’ll buy all three in one go, I thought.  And there they were, all in the cart and this review appears.  I get this serendipitous nudge.  No more delay-dalaying I thought more strongly. 

I then flip to the last page and see this article Stout and shad roe: Nero Wolfe – a detective who loves his grub.  Nero Wolfe … hmmm … haven’t heard this name before.  The article was about this detective created by Rex Stout, who loved his grub and had a personal gourmet chef in his house.  He is enormously fat and never leaves his house.  After reading this piece, I was not only hungry for breakfast, but also hungry to read Nero Wolfe’s stories.  So, another crime fiction article, eh … not bad.

I turn the page and go to page 2.  Is that a review of Pradeep Sebastian’s book?  He usually writes about rare books, book making, book-collecting and so on, on these same pages.  He has written a book?  The last time he came out with a book, The Groaning Shelf, it was a treasure for book collectors and antiquarians, and I absolutely loved it.  And this book under review?  Waah … it is a bibliomystery – The Book Hunters of Katpadi!!  I don’t know what this feeling is called, but somewhere I knew that if at all anybody wrote a bibliomystery in India in English, it would be Pradeep Sebastian.  I felt happy and pleased that my private prediction had come true.  This one I had to read. 

Three articles about mystery books?  I went to the first page to see if this is a mystery fiction special supplement or what … no, it was not that … just coincidence.  I go to page 3 and there staring at me is a review with the title Birbal meets Father Brown.  This is too much ya.  It is a book called The Tree Bears Witness: A Birbal Mystery by Sharath Komarraju.  Detective Birbal?  The review says the book promises some good Mughal murder, mystery, and sleuthing. 

Not bad … four mystery reviews … Tropical Detective and The Book Hunters of Katpadi pucca buying only …

I felt as I had eaten a hearty breakfast.  I went out and bought my regular weeklies – Outlook, India Today, and The Week.  Took up Outlook and started from the last page, and on the book review pages, I see this review of Umberto Eco’s Chronicles of a Liquid Society.  It made me feel excited.  I have read and immensely enjoyed Eco’s novels and essays, and I was saddened by his passing away in February 2016.  At that time there was a faint rumour that a collection of his essays would be forthcoming and I have been keeping a diligent watch.  Some months ago I saw Chronicles of a Liquid Society on amazon and was elated.  I didn’t buy the book immediately, I thought I’d wait for the paperback.  Yeah, the hardback being sold was expensive.  I knew that I would buy the book eventually.  The reviewer (Shobhit Mahajan) says that as a bibliophile, Eco has a number of essays on books and there was a reference to Nero Wolfe, the gourmet detective.  There is a ‘fascinating’ essay on Nero Wolfe, Mahajan says, for which Eco spent two months rereading all the eighty Nero Wolfe stories!  Nero Wolfe again! Twice in the same day!  This was certainly a serendipitous moment for me … now my curiosity was piqued.  I had to read Eco’s book and also Nero Wolfe’s stories.  Eco’s book would come in a bit later, but in the meantime I found the first Nero Wolfe novel floating in cyber-world as an e-book and started reading it.  All this is happening on the same Sunday. 

I open India Today in the afternoon, and start from the last page as usual.  And in the book reviews, I see a review of Pradeep Sebastian’s The Book Hunters of Katpadi!  Waah re waah … what serendipity!  Some great biblio-force was putting these links on my reading path that Sunday.  After that there was no doubt or hesitation in my mind … can’t ignore all these connections happening on the same day.  Then there was this absolute clarity.

Meet Inspector Napoleon 'Bony' Bonaparte ... Arthur W. Upfield's half-white half-aboriginal detective ... of Australia ...

I bought Arthur W. Upfield’s The Bone is Pointed along with two other books on the same day from three different secondhand booksellers on amazon.  Yeah, very unusual.  Actually, I was looking for books by some other author and The Bone is Pointed turned up along with other books.  My curiosity was pricked by An Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte Mystery on the cover.  Hmmm … this needs further investigation, I felt strongly. 

Of course, nothing should come across as uncommon, but every concept eventually gets stereotyped in some way.  I found out that the author, Arthur W. Upfield, was born in England, but lived in Australia all his adult life, and created this ‘half Aboriginal-half white Australian’ (in the language of the day, he would be called ‘half caste Aborigine’) detective inspector called Napoleon Bonaparte of the Queensland Police Force.  Napoleon Bonaparte is ‘Bony’ in the novels to those who know him. 

After he was sent to Australia by his father when he was around 20, Upfield joined the Australian military and fought during World War I.  He travelled throughout Australia doing all sorts of jobs after coming back from the war.  His travels in the Australian outback during this period gave him much knowledge of Australian Aboriginal culture that he used in his novels and other works.  Upfield says that during his travels he met a man known as ‘Tracker Leon,’ also a half Aboriginal-half white Australian and an excellent tracker, who was employed by the Queensland Police, and Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is based on this Tracker Leon.   

Upfield wrote 29 novels with Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte as the protagonist until his death in 1964.  The Bone is Pointed is the sixth in the ‘Bony’ series and was written in 1938.  This is Australia of the 1930s moving towards the 1960s that I would be reading in the 'Bony' novels -- the seen and lived contemporary Australia of the mid 20th century.  All his novels, then, were written much before I was born, and it is only now I get to know him.  Aah well … nothing lost.  I can always make up, I thought, going by the fact that I got to buy this novel for only Rs.99.  I started searching for more Napoleon Bonaparte novels, and I found them, but the prices were so high that I realized this ‘Rs.99 novel’ was the one that got away and landed on my lap.  This high price could also be due to scarcity and the ‘niche’ factor.  But, not to worry, I can wait and will keep track of the prices and movements of new copies in old portals. 

I have reached page 64 of The Bone is Pointed and I have since met Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte and he introduced himself thus …

You know … were I not a rebel against red tape and discipline I should be numbered among the ordinary detectives who go here and go there and do this and that as directed.  Team work, they call it.  I am never a part of a team.  I am always the team.  As I told you, I think, once I begin an investigation I stick to it until it is finished.  Authority and time mean little to me, the investigation everything.  That is the foundation of my successes.

This comes towards the end of chapter 3 and I liked this detective and his personal manifesto instantly, and there is no doubt that I would go on and read, if not all, many more of his exploits.  And immediately after this introduction, Bony does a Holmesian deduction cameo and Sargeant Blake the local policeman, Watson like, bewildered, asks Bony, “How did you do it?” …  Bony’s answer tells us about his affinity with the great Australian outback, the bush, being an Aboriginal, his natural self so to say …

“In a city drawing-room, a city office, on a city street, I am like a nervous child,” Bony began his reply, which was no reply to the policeman.  “Here in bush townships I am a grown man.  Out there in the bush I am an emperor.  The bush is me : I am the bush : we are one.”  And then Bony laughed, softly, to add: “There are moments when I feel great pride in being the son of an aboriginal woman, because in many things it is the aboriginal who is the highly developed civilized being and the white man who is the savage.  Perhaps your association with me on this case will make you believe that.”

And by now we also get an aerial view and detailed description of the Australian bush when Bony is taken in a plane from the bush town to the vast farmhouse in the bush across vast stretches of land, woods, water bodies, and ranches, farms, with horses, sheep, and fences.  So, I have met the detective now and know the lie of the land and I just finished reading an engrossing and penetrating session of questioning by Bony.  I know I am in for a good investigative journey into Australia’s outback in The Bone is Pointed.

My Pelikan M800 is restored and dazzles ... thanks to Hari and the Pelikan pen company ...

I used to write about Indian handmade fountain pens regularly till 2015.  I had managed to track down quite a few handmade pen makers and pen brands in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, got fountain pens from Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and collected precious fountain pens made of ebonite, acrylic, and celluloid – names of materials I didn’t know were associated with the making of fountain pens.  More than collecting, I was interested in bringing to light the history of these writing instruments and their brand names, and their owners.  I was able to do that to some extent and I can say with some pleasure that my posts with their photos of pens brought some visibility to these brands among fountain pen lovers in India and abroad.  The ‘old’ and ‘history’ part of the Indian handmade fountain pens slowly faded away and I felt that I was able to collect and showcase whatever I possibly could in these years. 

Almost at the same time, I was also collecting ‘foreign’ fountain pens.  That also began as a frenzy.  I wanted to have at least one fountain pen from each of the acclaimed and time-tested brands.  My friend Hari, in Mumbai, sourced me most of these pens, some second-hand, some new, but all welcome.  If not for Hari and his high levels of motivation in seeing me invested in ‘foreign’ fountain pens, I would not have had the guts to move in that direction.  When I look at the current prices of these ‘foreign’ fountain pens, I look at my small collection with fondness. 

And sometime last year, one such fond and much loved pen met with an accident … my most beautiful Pelikan M800 just broke into two at the section … I am not sure how it happened, I don’t recall dropping it or don’t remember the pen having a fall … there appeared to be some force applied at the section … this is a piston filler fountain pen and without realizing this somebody must have tried to twist it at the section … and it broke … when I discovered it, I was aghast … I was so heartbroken that I just kept it in its box not knowing what to do … it lay in its box for months, and then one day I decided to tell Hari, who got me the pen in the first place … I told him first, and then he asked me send pictures … I held the two broken pieces of the pen and took these pictures …

As soon as he saw the pictures, Hari told me to send him the pen as soon as possible … I asked him what’s the hurry … he said his father is leaving for England and he’d send the damaged pen with him and ask him to send it from England to the Pelikan pen company in Germany (or was it Switzerland?) and see what can be done … Hari said let’s take a chance and see …  I did as Hari told me and I sent the pen by the fastest service available, but unfortunately the floods in Mumbai created some tension at the last minute and the pen reached Mumbai just in time …    

Hari kept sending me one line updates in the initial days, but once the pen reached Germany, even he was clueless … and then one day Hari texted me saying that my Pelikan M800 is repaired and it has been sent back to England … ooohh … this was tremendous news … Pelikan M800 back to life … wow … after a couple of exhilarating days savouring this news, other things took over and I forgot about it … a couple of months later, Hari’s father brought the pen back to India and Hari sent the repaired pen back to me … this is how it looks …

 

Beautiful, na … the good people at Pelikan have replaced the entire barrel and possibly the section too … repaired it and sent it back to England … and all this without taking a pfennig or paisa … the blue barrel shimmers  … all the gold trims dazzle … ooh maan …

I didn’t think it would happen this way … the worst that could happen I thought was that they’d send the pen back as it was saying it can’t be repaired … or maybe they’d quote a price for repair and replacement … I was sort of ready for that … but this was totally unexpected … Hari took on this responsibility and thanks to his persistence I got my pen back in pristine shape … Hari had faith, but I was circumspect … bhejke dekhenge he told me … a little faith goes a long way … via England to Germany and back to India by the same route …

Thanks Pelikan, this good gesture will be remembered for a long long time and this post is a heartfelt appreciation of the care you take of your customers and for the wonderful fountain pens that you create … and the pride you take in your fountain pens …