A good Sunday haul at Abids…19 July 2015

Every Sunday, the previous four Sundays, I planned to visit Abids and each Sunday something or the other pushed the trip a week further…

The Abidian siren call I could no longer resist … and this Sunday I set forth …

I missed the bus at 10 and had to wait for another 50 minutes for the next…I thought I’d be late, but I realized when I reached there I was sort of early … the stalls and shelves were just about being arranged with books … Vinod and the others hadn’t yet arrived in the usual pre-hunt hangout … I hung around and browsed some nearby heaps … a text comes from Vinod … we exchange texts and meet at the Irani … he tells me Umashankar and Srikanth won’t be joining the party today … then, Vinod gifts me two books … Manoje Basu’s I Come As a Thief  and Keki Daruwalla’s collection of poems, A Summer of Tigers … I particularly like those old Orient Paperback novels by Indian writers … and this one has a certain charm to it …. Some months back I had found a collection of poems by Adil Jussawala, and Daruwalla’s book is a welcome addition to my collection of Indian English verse … Thanks Vinod! 

Chai and biscuits and conversation later we proceed with hopes held high … I was looking for Len Deighton’s Spy Hook … among other titles … I have read the Game-Set-Match trilogy, the first trilogy in the Bernand Samson tri-trilogy … Hook-Line-Sinker is the second trilogy … I found Line and Sinker separately earlier at Abids … I can’t start the second trilogy without Hook … it’s been some time since I won the Game, Set and Match and it’s been some time also since I have the Line and Sinker … until I have the Hook I can’t fall completely … and then there is the third trilogy … Faith-Hope-Charity ... so, anyway, we went around looking for books … and Vinod espied Faith, just as I had picked up a rather colourful book, Flags of the World, and pointed it out to me …. I was looking for the first in the second, and I found the first in the third …. I picked it up … and we went further, I saw an E. L. Doctorow novel … I had found two Doctorows earlier in Abids and World’s Fair was going to be my third Doctorow at Abids … the more the merrier … I crossed the street and found Charity … what luck! The last in the third!  I need Hook and Hope now … I had four books already and I was feeling happy …

Then we went towards GPO where there were some more sellers … nothing of interest and as we were moving back, Vinod asked me if I had seen The Thirty-Nine Steps … I hadn’t seen it … but he had and he tried to remember the location and we looked carefully at each book spread-out on the pavement … just as Vinod was giving up hope that the book had been claimed, he said eureka and pointed his forefinger at a red and black cover … there it was … The Thirty-Nine Steps …

I paid Rs.20/- each for the 5 books I found … 5 books for 100 rupees … nice, no?