jaisiri

Despite wanting to visit Abids on Sunday for months now, to look for second hand books and to meet Vinod and friends, I couldn’t go for so many reasons … and unable to bear the desperation, I decided to visit the second hand book stall near Sangeet last Tuesday which is open all through the week … and see if I could satisfy my second hand book cravings … I have passed the book stall on Sangeet road many a times recently while going elsewhere in the car and always looked longingly at the stall as it fleeted past … at one point of time when Sangeet was still a movie theatre and this book stall was housed in the nearby building, I was a frequent visitor and have bought many books worth remembering and cherishing … now the book stall has ‘come to the road side,’ and I still visit it, but the pickings have become less and less as numbers dwindled and range narrowed and became predictable …

There was some difference this time … the stall looked healthier and I saw more hard-bound coffee table books on the far side … there were more books, it looked like … apart from the shelves inside the temporary roofing, there were a couple of tables in the open ‘under the permanent roofing’ with books arranged neatly on them … the book-laden tables looked inviting … but there was a warning sign … the price sign … which said ‘Any book Rs. 100’ … that was helpful actually … the search would now be slow and careful …

Lots of good books on the tables … some of them I had and had read … some of them I wanted to read … I browsed and browsed … made two rounds … something caught my attention … I thought I’d come back for a third round and check and then went inside … the collection inside was predictable … didn’t find anything interesting … finished that part quickly and then came to the tables … at the farthest end were stacked around five books that looked like a set … picked them up and saw that they were books of the Martin Beck series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo … I remember having bought a book by the same authors a couple of years ago, but the name eluded me … I’d go home and check …

At that time I had read about the authors and discovered that the authors, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, were Swedish and were married to each other and that they wrote ten crime novels with Martin Beck as the detective … these ten novels were written between 1965 and 1975 … the authors planned to write only ten novels and this Decalogue was subtitled ‘The Story of a Crime’ …

To get back to the table … there were five novels in the set and one was a double, so there were four Martin Beck books on offer … I thought … hesitated … and then re-thought … and then, ‘what the heck,’ I told myself and picked up the four novels … The Laughing Policeman, The Abominable Man, The Locked Room, and The Terrorists… the books were also conveniently numbered according to their order in the series … 4, 7, 8, and 10 …

After I bought the books, I noticed that this particular series was in many ways unique … there were a lot of extras in each book … for instance, The Laughing Policeman had an introduction by Sean and Nicci French, another crime-writer pair, and an essay inside by Richard Shepard, and an interview, and other articles, and information about the authors … so, a lot of related reading material … I liked that … The Locked Room has an introduction by Michael Connelly and similar essays and articles at the end … and the other two novels too have these ‘extras’ … not bad, I thought …

Of the novels, The Laughing Policeman had blurbs raving about the book and I read in one of the extra articles at the end that this novel was made into a film by Hollywood, probably one of the earliest Swedish crime novels to be made into an English film … these kind of gave me the impetus to read this novel first …

What a novel! Till the middle almost, you are following the solving of a crime and then slowly you find yourself looking at two crimes … an old unsolved one and the current one … and it is done so smoothly that it is after some time that you realise that …

Martin Beck is a police detective and solves crimes along with his colleagues and the writers provide a parallel ‘opinionated’ commentary of contemporary Sweden through the novel … these are ‘police procedure’ novels … and it is said that Martin Beck sort of provided the template for later police detectives in police procedure crime novels like John Rebus (Ian Rankin), Kurt Wallander (Henning Mankell), Alan Banks (Peter Robinson), and others … you know, the kind of police detective who is very much attached to his work, has a drinking problem, married, but a marred married life and moving towards divorce, very few people in the force find him congenial, and so on …

After I reached home, I noticed that each book had a different letter above the serial number on the spine … I wondered what these letters meant … it didn’t make any sense to me at that time …

And then when I went online to see if there are pictures of similar jacket covers which I could use for my post, I saw a photo of the Martin Beck series books which unravelled the mystery of the letters … each book has one letter from the name ‘Martin Beck’ starting from M … how convenient or how coincidental? … did the authors write only ten books and name their detective Martin Beck, a name which has only ten letters, so that a publisher can put each letter on the spine and release the series as a set? Or was it a smart publisher who has a sudden flash and put ten and ten together? Anyway, I have only four books in the series, and now the combined spines look like this …

And when I complete the set, it would look like this … cool na?

(picture taken from http://fleurinherworld.com/2010/04/28/roseanna-by-maj-sjowall-per-wahloo/ )

I now have to hunt and hunt like anything for the other 6 books in the series … but, What the Beck maan, I am going to pound the streets and won’t rest till I find them …

As soon as I saw this book, the cover caught my attention first, then I saw the name of the author … at first I thought it was Khushwant Singh! Then I saw that the actual author’s name was almost hidden among the leaves and clouds at the top … anyway, that fact was established … I had heard N. S. Madhavan’s name long back in connection with his well-known short story Higuita… a friend and fellow-researcher at CIEFL, M T Ansari had written a paper on the author and this short story ... this piqued my interest in the story and I had read the story in English translation then … and so when I saw the author’s name, I picked up the book … something lit up dimly in the dark recesses of my memory, which told me that I had either read a review or some reference to this novel … not a strong enough vibe to remember anything clearly … I felt I should buy this book … then there was a longish blurb by Khushwant Singh on the opening page, a part of which appears on the cover … at the back there were some more positive comments … and if I want to know more, then Wikipedia is always there for initial information … and this is what I got to know … Madhavan primarily writes short stories in Malayalam and has published five collections of short stories, all highly acclaimed, with Higuita being judged the best short story in hundred years of Malayalam literature … and Litanies of Dutch Battery written in 2003 (Lanthan Batheriyile Luthiniyakal) is his first and only novel so far … this novel was translated into English in 2010 …

And “the novel is about life on an imaginary island in the Kochi backwater, named after a 17th-century battery (bathery in Malayalam) of five cannons installed on its promontory by the Dutch (Lanthans in Malayalam). Jessica, the young narrator of the story, is the scion of a family of carpenters with a long tradition of boat building. Her remniscences start from the days when she was inside her pregnant mother's womb. The novel presents an intimate picture of life of the Latin Christians of the Kerala coast, descendants of poor, low-caste Hindus who were converted to Christianity by Portuguese colonists in the 16th century.”

When the Murty Classical Library was announced around two years back (if I am not wrong), I was excited … this is almost the first time that something of this kind was happening … I had heard of Classical Library publications like the Loeb Classical Library and the Clay Sanskrit Library and was sort of aware of what would emerge if the Murty Classical Library of India project took off … the biggest surprise for me was the fact that Dr Rohan Murty, computer scientist, was funding the project … Rohan Murty is the son of N. R. Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys …

After the initial announcement, this information sort of went somewhere into some unmarked corner of my memory store … and in 16 January 2015 issue of OPEN, I saw this article by Tunku Varadarajan, “The Books of Civilization,” which told me that the first 5 books of the Library were released … the article begins with:

“If the Bharat Ratna has not been utterly debased by political whimsy and point-scoring—whether from the ‘secular’ left or the ‘Hindu’ right— I’d want that honour to be conferred, 25 years from today, on Sheldon Pollock and Rohan Narayana Murty.

The former, professor of Sanskrit at Columbia, is the general editor of the Murty Classical Library of India, a series of translated volumes of classical Indian literature that has been funded by the latter, a computer scientist from Harvard and the son (notwithstanding the missing ‘h’ in his surname) of N R Narayana Murthy, the billionaire co- founder of Infosys. With an endowment from Murty of $5.2 million, the series has enough capital in its vaults to keep going for 100 years, at the rate of five new volumes of translation per year—a ‘love-marriage’ of delicious elegance between new money and old glory.”

(you can read the complete article here ... http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/voices/the-books-of-civilisation )

Rohan Murty and Sheldon Pollock

And the rest of the article goes on to talk about each volume of the series … when I started reading, I thought these books would be beyond my reach, but Varadarajan assures us that though the handsome hardbacks were steep, the paperbacks were a “dazzling bargain” … I checked the prices online on two sites and there was some difference in prices and discounts and also shipping charges … I went back and forth till the evening and by evening amazon.in had made shipping ‘free’ … I bought all 5 in one go (that means I bought these books in January this year and am writing about them in April ... such a long journey, Jai? ) … These are the first five titles of the Murty Classical Library:

Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women, translated by Charles Hallisey.
The Story of Manu, by Allasani Peddana, translated by Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman.
Sur's Ocean: Poems from the Early Tradition, Surdas, edited by Kenneth E. Bryant, translated by John Stratton Hawley.
Sufi Lyrics, Bullhe Shah, edited and translated by Christopher Shackle.
The History of Akbar, Volume 1 (the Akbarnama), by Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, edited and translated by Wheeler Thackston.

The first time I read some of the Therigatha Poems was sometime in 1994 when I bought Women Writing in India, Vol. 1, which had English translations of poems of the Buddhist senior nuns or theris, hence Theri-gatha… that gave me a good introduction to the earliest writings by women in India, dating back to 6^th century BC … I don’t remember much of that now … Surdas’s poems are not entirely new, them being part of Hindi textbooks during school and with this huge volume, close to a thousand pages with notes and all, there is immense scope for more illumination … I have heard some sufi songs and qawwalies of Bullhe Shah over the years, but since they were mostly in Punjabi, the meanings were not apparent as one would like them to be, and this English translation might mitigate that, I hope, as and when I get time to read them … the other two books, The Story of Manu and the Akbarnama, I am completely unfamiliar with, except that one has read in school history books that Abul Fazl wrote Akbarnama …

And by this rather weak round-up of these five volumes, it is evident that I haven’t read even small portions of these wonderful books … except the last two mentioned which are in prose, the first three contain verses, and so it might be easier to tackle them poem by poem, or read verses randomly and take it one at a time …

And these are the pictures of the covers of the books I bought … I know they haven’t come out well … but, well …

Published by the Harvard University Press, each volume is in the dual-language format with the original language and English facing … like this …

I wholeheartedly welcome this initiative and feel that this kind of series or library was long overdue … yes, we have the Clay Sanskrit Library, but that deals with only Sanskrit … look at the language range in the first five volumes of the Murty Classical Library – Pali, Punjabi, Telugu, Brajbasha, Persian – and there are many more to come, they have promised …

Thanks Rohan Murty and Sheldon Pollock …

I had walked the entire books-strewn stretch at Abids and found nothing of interest … I felt I would be returning empty handed … and then Vinod took me across the road adjacent to the GPO, where there was a lone seller with some books arranged on the pavement … there weren’t many books and I wondered what I would find there … I was on the pavement and Vinod was on the other side of the railing, on the road … the book titles were facing Vinod! He spied a book and asked me to pick it up for him … it was then that I noticed this book … Vaikom Muhammed Basheer’s The Love Letter and Other Stories (translated from the Malayalam by V. Abdulla) ... superb, I thought, and picked it up … Vinod had picked up a copy of this book a couple of weeks back and had posted a picture of its cover and I had envied him … this is an out-of-print book, but the cover was not as good as Vinod’s copy … but the rest of the book was in good condition and I picked it up … (Wikipedia has a fairly informative page on Basheer ...)

The cover is the reproduction of a lithograph by Laxman Pai - Illustration for Jayadev's Geet Govind No. 8

This book is published by Sangam Books, Hyderabad, and was first published in 1983, and this edition is a 1996 reprint … quite old, actually … I was aware that Sangam Books was a sort of imprint or division of Orient Longman (now Blackswan), based in Hyderabad … at the end of this book, there is a list of books published by Sangam and I saw that they had also published another translation of Basheer’s two ‘novelettes’ in one volume, Voices/The Walls (also translated by V. Abdulla) ... after I came home, I went online to the Orient Blackswan site and checked whether Sangam is still on and saw that it was … I eagerly scanned the Sangam books list to see if they still had their old titles … but alas, they publish only text-books sort of books now … what happened to their literary titles, I wondered … I checked the titles by Orient Blackswan and saw that they had a book by Basheer … Poovan Banana and Other Stories… I tried to see what stories this book contained, but the site had no information … I continued my search and there was this site called printasia.in which gave me this information … and what do I learn? … Poovan Banana and Other Stories is a combined edition of both Basheer books earlier published by Sangam, and one extra story!! … chalo, at least, these Basheer stories in English translations are not out of print, though the Sangam editions are … they are there in another guise … so, those of you who are looking for Sangam editions of Basheer’s books of stories, Poovan Banana and Other Stories is the answer … I did some more online book sleuthing to find out what happened to another Basheer book of 3 stories in English translation that seems to have gone out of print ... the happy result is for another post …

I picked up another book from the same seller and also by the same publisher, Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Pratidwandi… I had read this writer’s book Those Days earlier … the cover of Pratidwandiwas also not in a good shape, but I did not want to let it go …Pratidwandiwas made into a film by Satyajit Ray … I got both books for Rs.20 each … how do I protect their covers now?

The third book I got was The Two Ronnies - But First the News… Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett performed together in comedy sketch shows on BBC and this book brings tighter some of their jokes, dialogues, and repartees … very nice wry British humour …

When I found The Love Letter and Other Stories the other Sunday at Abids, it set me off on a search for Basheer translations in English … I love book detective work … and after lots of surfing discovered that the two Sangam out-of-print editions The Love Letter and Other Stories and Voices/The Walls was available in one volume as Poovan Banana and Other Stories and was published by Orient Blackswan (Sangam’s parent) … Poovan Banana and Other Stories also has an extra ‘bonus’ story … the cover looks like this … I haven’t yet bought the book though …

I wanted more Basheer and wanted to know if the Penguin (Viking India) book ‘Me Grandad ‘Ad an Elephant(translator: R E Asher) was available anywhere … my friend Satish Poduval was working with Basheer stories for a while, long back in 1993 or so, and I remember seeing a hardback copy of this book with him … then when Satish, Srinivas Prasad, and I were on a trip to Ranchi, we stopped at Vijayawada for a day to meet Venkat (Acharyaha), and invariably ended up in a bookshop and there were saw a paperback edition of the same book … Srinivas Prasad bought that copy … after that I haven’t seen another copy of the book … the book contained three long stories (or novellas, one might call them) and was subtitled ‘Three Stories of Muslim Life in South India’ … the cover looked like this …

I tried to find a copy for myself to buy later, but couldn’t find one anywhere … at that time e-commerce and online shopping were not yet words that buzzed … and recently, I located one copy on amazon.com, but that was too expensive for me … but after I bought The Love Letter and Other Stories, the urge to buy Me Grandad ‘Ad an Elephant became more intense …

I visited all sites that came up when I hit the ‘search’ button with ‘Me Grandad … in the google window … I then went to ‘images’ … and then I saw this image of a cover with the name Me Grandad ‘Ad an Elephant which was different from the one I had seen earlier … it had the names of the author and the translators on the cover … there was a stylised ‘m’ on top, sort of the logo of the publisher … it didn’t look like a Penguin or Viking book … I clicked on the image and was taken to the Kerala Book Store site … and there I saw the cover clearly … and more details … the publisher is Mathrubhumi Books and this book is a recent one, published this year … aah! … after all these years, the book surfaces with a new cover and a new publisher … how nice I thought … and I saw that two more covers (small images) of Basheer (English translations) titles were displayed on the same page … have they published more, I wondered, and clicked … one title was Pattumma’s Goat and the other was Childhood Friend… again I wondered … and then I realized … though I hadn’t read the book that Satish had, I remember him talking with his Malayalee brethren and sistren about Basheer stories and the names Pathummayude Aadu and Balyakala Sakhi came up frequently … Me Grandad ‘Ad an Elephant, along with Pathummayude Aadu and Balyakala Sakhi made up the “three stories of Muslim life” … yes, that one book has been made into three books now … and more importantly, these Basheer stories are now available again … thanks to Mathrubhumi … and they are not expensive … I bought all three …

Among the more evocative Tulu terms that I came across was ‘Baardaan’ … this was again a term that I heard very frequently when I was in Mangalore … the term was used to refer to chaps who were utterly useless, but indispensable for some inexplicable reason … a sort of ‘necessary burden’ …

I asked my father the actual meaning of this term … he then explained that boats and steamers, ships too, had to have a certain amount of weight to remain afloat in water and not wobble or topple … a sort of optimum weight, which involves some kind of physics related to ‘displacement’ and all that … remember Archimedes and his eureka moment? Yeah, exactly, that sort of thing … so, for the steamer or ship to have the optimum weight, it must have enough freight to carry, especially, if it is a cargo ship … sometimes there isn’t enough cargo to carry, but existing cargo must be transported, so, sand bags are dumped into the cargo hold to make up the required weight … these sand bags are only there to make up the required weight, and apart from that they don’t serve any purpose … but they are necessary, otherwise the steamer would wobble and topple … this burden has to be carried … it is a total loss to ferry these bags of sand, but you can’t do without them … so, these sand bags that are used to make up the requisite weight in a ship are called ‘BARDAAN,’ father said …

As an aside, Bardaan might have some connection with Burden, you see … same consonant sounds … /b/ /d/ /n/ … maybe the word has Arabic or Persian origins … Mangalore has had trade links with Arabia for centuries before the Europeans came and screwed up everything … “White Man’s Burden” and that sort of thing … come to think of it, most of the Englishmen who were part of the Empire were just making up the numbers … ‘White Man’s A Burden’/‘Bardaan’ …

Whether ‘Bardaan’ is a Tulu word or not, I am not so sure … and I am not sure too if this term is used across languages in Dakshina Kannada, but it is part of Tulu language … and see, so much hidden behind a word … if only we care to look around …

(Those of you readers who are Tulu speakers or are from Dakshina Kannada … please do send me common words/terms of similar resonances to continue the thread … you could also write a whole post, and I would put them as ‘Guest Posts’ … )

As I set out to go to Abids on the last Sunday of April, I had a clear agenda … I was to buy books for Mamoon … Shruti said Mamoon was getting bored at home … all her friends were away on vacation and she ended up watching the dreaded Doraemon endlessly and tirelessly … she seemed interested in Math, Shruti said … (for god’s sake) … and colouring and painting … and I was to pick up books on elementary Math (1^ststandard) and time-pass colouring and activity books … and Abids overflows with such books and it would be easy to choose a few, so I thought …

That day, I reached late, and Vinod reached Abids even later, so, it was mid-day by the time we all started out book search after our customary tea and biscuit … Shruti had given me a bottle of her summer special mango-vinegar sweet pickle for Vinod, which was duly delivered and thanks received … then I showed off my HMT Pilot Orange dial watch (all colour colour HMT Pilots to come in the next post!!) to Uma and Srikanth …

There were heaps and heaps of painting, colouring and activity books and even more books on elementary mathematics … it took me some time to settle my nerves, haunch down, and start choosing … I decided to stick to one heap and one seller, instead by moving from heap to heap and getting further confused … and after around 40 minutes of searching and selecting I put together two sets of books …

Colour, Craft, Activity books

Math practice books

It was getting hotter, and I thought I’d call it a day, but I wanted to see if I could find at least one book for myself, having come all the way to Abids on a hot Sunday … I couldn’t concentrate and speed-scanned through the heaps of books … and found The New Yorker Book of Dog Cartoons…

This book appears to be a gift to somebody called Sarita from Marley, Heidi, and Stella … with an additional note from somebody called Jefferson, who explains why Sarita ended up with this book and not some other … very nice … wonder who these people are …

Some months back I had found The New Yorker Book of CatCartoons at Abids … and this one on Dog cartoons is a welcome addition … and with this, I quickly concluded my hunt for the day and returned home …

Like many kids of her age, Mamoon (Sudhriti) likes to colour, draw, paint, and enjoys her ‘drawing and painting’ … Shruti and I generally indulge her; I more than just generally … now that she is vacationing at home, she tries her hand at ‘independent’ ‘drawing and painting’ … enough of colouring books, so she seems to say …

A couple of years back, Mamoon stunned us with this painting …

It was randomly done and it was so beautiful, that I started dreaming … Kandinsky, Miro, I thought … anyway, I was reminded of what Bikasho had said once, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child …” Mamoon must have been around three and a half at that time, and this painting made me think of the complexities of ‘abstract art’ … she would have had no inkling of the turbulence that this created within me . . .

Everything has returned to terra-firma now, and she draws and paints like a five and half year old now . . . no fancy flights of imagination . . . just rooted firmly in terra firma . . . houses, grass, skies, birds, rivers, trees, etc. . . . and most importantly self-portraits . . . and Shruti and I are her patrons, sort of . . . she draws and colours her paintings and dedicates and gifts them to either Shruti or me and sometimes to both . . . and sometimes she writes her name too . . .

Here are a couple of landscapes . . . these are all her most recent ones . . .

This one is done with crayons . . . and dedicated to ‘Mom’ . . . I like the trees . . . and there are a couple of fish in the river . . . the sun is smiling and the birds seem happy

Her first ‘conscious’ water-colour . . . a general outline was done by her grandfather and she improvised with colours . . . I like the trees here too . . . and the sun was an after thought . . . no space for birds, so no birds . . .

Are here are some self-portraits . . .

This one is dedicated to Mom and Dad . . . and she is in the midst of this landscape . .

Here, she is outside her house . . .

And here, she seems to be gung-ho about something . . . fist raised and all . . . or maybe she is just walking . . . and the sun is shining, and smiling, as always . . .

And that’s all for now . . . from Mamoon's indulgent Baba . . .

The HMT Pilot Black Dial was and continues to be one of the coveted mechanical watches from the HMT stable. I had written about my father’s 40 year-old HMT Pilot and the ‘influential’ way in which he managed to get hold of it in a previous post (http://www.jaisiri.blogspot.in/2014/10/my-fathers-hmt-pilot-black-dial-c-1973.html). My youngest brother, Ganu, had retrieved it from my father’s old items’ box and got it serviced and gave it to me when he heard that I had got into yet another hobby. Of course, now that I have managed to infect him a little with the HMT-watch virus, he must be regretting giving it to me. That was a proud watch for me. A real vintage watch. I felt nice wearing it. The Pilot kept going and there never seemed to enough of it going around for all those seekers. The current Pilot models are different from the one that my father bought. I have also mentioned the differences in that post. I thought it would be nice to have a ‘modern’ Pilot, but I couldn’t find them anywhere in any of the showrooms and Hari said he’d try.

My Appa's Pilot

And sometime back Hari had asked me, out of the blue actually, if I wanted a ‘White’ dial Pilot! I didn’t know one of this kind existed, and I told Hari. He said, this lot was custom-made-to-order and he has got a few. I eagerly said ‘yes’ and got this ‘rare’ White Pilot . . .

The White Knight ... notice the exquisite blue hands and green dots near the 4 numerals
. . . and the font . . .

In the meanwhile, Shubha called and said that she had found somebody in Coimbatore who had Pilots to sell and asked me whether I wanted one. And she got one each for us three brothers.

The New Black-dial Pilot . . .

And then not many months ago, the HMT website started displaying colour colour dial Pilots . . . brownish-maroon, saffronish-red, and yellow . . . also an Arabic numerals Pilot . . . but whenever I looked, the status was always ‘stocks awaited’ . . . I too waited . . . but stocks were still ‘awaited’ . . . and then one evening, back from college, I went online and to my shock and surprise, saw that the brownish-maroon and saffronish-red Pilots had both come out of ‘stocks awaited’ to ‘stocks available’… I hesitated for a while, refreshed the page a few times, and clicked both with trembling hands . . .

The Maroon & The Saffron . . .

I told Hari that I bought these two colour Pilots . . . and the yellow was still ‘awaited’ . . . he then gave me a valuable tip . . . I thought I’d put it to test the coming week . . . despite that, the yellow fellow kept eluding me for a long long time . . . and again, some weeks back, on a sleepless Saturday afternoon, out of sheer laziness, I visited the HMT site and saw that the yellow fellow was available along with the Arabic numerals Pilot . . . I couldn’t believe my eyes . . . I said ‘yes’ to both . . .

The Yellow Fellow . . .

The Arabic Pilot . . .

I told Hari about this and he said, people are after these colour dial Pilots now, but at one point of time these were available across the counter at all HMT showrooms and none of us bothered . . . he said, a dealer used to almost beseech me to buy the yellow Pilot . . . but see now . . . whatever pieces of Pilot they release get sold within minutes . . .

Anyway, these are the Pilots that I have . . .

. . . and then he told me that HMT made seven colour dial Pilots and sent me a link . . . one for each day of the week, he said . . . wow . . . and he had all of them . . . more wow . . . so, here are all of them . . . all these belong to Hari, including the photo . . .

I need three more colours to complete the rainbow . . . I don’t know if HMT would put them online . . . but I am hoping that they would do in the near future . . . the blue especially looks very very tempting . . .

I know this is a madcap ride . . . but can’t help it . . .

When Chai, Chai first came out, I had read about it and felt I should buy and read it . . . I spoke about this book to a friend of mine and he came up with a strange kind of response . . . hey, he has written about where-all he got down from the train and where-all in those towns he went to drink . . . I wondered how far this could be true . . . this friend could sometimes be way off the mark . . . and he has a healthy disregard for people who drink . . . so, I wondered . . .

I first came across Bishwanath Ghosh through his blog, On the Ganga Mail, when I was generally googling about Mont Blanc fountain pens and read a post about his visit to Varanasi and how he had to unwillingly keep his wallet, Mont Blanc FP, watch, etc., with a shopkeeper while he went inside the temple . . . and since then I have followed his blog regularly . . . (now I too have 3 Mont Blanc FPs!)

And whenever I used to visit Bishwanath Ghosh’s blog, which was not very frequent mainly because he writes fewer posts now than earlier (2 till the end of April 2015, 9 in 2014, 12 in 2013, 27 in 2012 . . .) (he has suddenly increased his output in May 2015!!), I used to see the ‘Buy Chai, Chai’ button and continued to wonder . . . and in a recent post, he wrote about how it’s been more than five years since Chai, Chai was published and still continues to do well . . . and how his two later books, though written with much more discipline, awareness, and research than Chai, Chai are not as popular . . . and he writes about how Chai, Chai has been received by readers, and quotes their responses . . . I decided . . . I have to buy Chai, Chai and read it . . . and I did . . . bought it online and read in a day . . . chapter-wise . . . or rather, station-wise...

And to my surprise, he says in the ‘new preface’ to this edition, how Chai, Chai was received kindly by reviewers and readers, but there was one recurring complaint, ‘that it contains too many episodes of my drinking in the local bars’ . . . I found that bewitching . . . I could have said ‘honest,’ but lots of writers are honest anyway . . . and he goes on to say how he was being faithful to the narrative by describing things as they happened to him . . . and he writes some more about the inevitability of it all . . .

So, what about the rest of the book? This post is only about my responses to the book, and not a review . . . firstly, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book . . . what with me being as curious as Bishwanath Ghosh about places like Mughalsarai, Itarsi, Jhansi, Guntakal, Arakkonam, Jolarpettai, and Shoranur . . . places that you see only railway platforms of . . . I used to think about these places, but then the train moved on after replenishing and refreshing itself . . . it was only after my father was transferred to Sultanpur in UP, that I saw the platforms of Mughalsarai, Itarsi, and Jhansi . . . but Jolarpettai, Arakkonam, Shoranur were familiar platforms for our family as we moved around Tamil Nadu and Kerala and Karnataka in trains . . . there were other places too in the recent past as the trains chugged from Hyderabad to Howrah . . . and from thereon to Gaya . . . I saw only the platforms, and now don’t even remember the names . . . and somehow one place name keeps coming up again and again . . . Bongaigaon . . . I know it is in Assam, a place I have never visited . . . maybe it is a leftover name from my days of reading Railway Timetables . . . ha ha ha . . . ever done that?

The concept of alighting at transit stations where, except for the residents of these places, no traveler ever thinks of going, is itself extraordinary and beguiling . . . but I am sure many of us, train travelers of some vintage, would have wondered however briefly, what went on in these towns . . . are Arakkonam’s and Jolarpettai’s claim to fame only their railway stations? Or Shoranur, for that matter . . . Chai, Chai fulfils this desire in more ways than one . . . now we know a little more about Arakkonam and Jolarpettai, not to say Mughalsarai and Itarsi . . . these stations have become intervals in our journeys across India by rail . . . one measures the remaining distance or time depending on when the train reaches these places . . . aah, two more hours . . . enna, vandi late-a oduda? . . . aaf-en-avar-le Jolarppetai vandudum, sar . . . says the tea-man . . . or pantry-car person . . . time to get down, stretch one’s legs, see if you can get today’s ‘English paper,’ which could well be yesterday’s with today’s date, and carries news about things that might well have taken place on another universe altogether, except for cricket and films, of course . . .

The bars are all there . . . and Ghosh is clearly enjoying his time in them . . . the lodges, and the trouble he undergoes finding a room in one of them, the taxi journeys from the ‘centre’ of the towns to the ‘peripheries,’ his visits to ‘historical places,’ and temples, are all narrated with a great deal of involvement and interest . . . and towns like Arakkonam, Jolarppetai, and Shoranur, where Ghosh sees nothing to involve himself in and therefore less interesting, are dispatched in double quick time and space without dishonest lingering on . . . and it comes out very clearly that Ghosh has taken this journey seriously and is as curious about these places as many of us would be except that he alights and comes out of the railway station . . . and sees the town and smells the whisky . . .

Chai, Chai reminded me of two books . . . one is Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August and the other is Pico Iyer’s Falling off the Map . . . for entirely different reasons . . . Chai, Chai evokes the small town feeling that is marvelously depicted in English, August . . . a feeling of ennui . . . especially for someone who goes there from a big city or ‘metro’ . . . you don’t know what to do . . . Pico Iyer’s Falling off the Map is subtitled ‘some lonely places of the world’ . . . though there is a difference in scale, experience, and style, Chai, Chai is conceptually similar . . . in Bishwanath’s Ghosh’s book one slides off these familiar platforms and tumbles into their unfamiliar towns . . .

After waiting and waiting and waiting, the Ibis finally berthed . . . Amitav Ghosh’s Flood of Fire, the third and last in the Ibis Trilogy released in the last week of May this year . . . I had pre-ordered the book on Amazon and received my copy on 31^stMay . . . and couldn’t wait to start reading . . . but first, I had to save the exquisite gold and red cover . . .

Actually, I had planned to re-read Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke and get ready for the Flood of Fire, but the best laid plans of men and so on and so forth . . . anyway, I started to read Flood of Fire and slowly the characters and events started coming into focus . . . but I could read only till page 55 . . . the last set of internal tests at college started the next day and I was flooded with answer scripts for correction and that occupied me for the rest of the week . . . and I had barely finished them then the language lab tests started this Monday onwards and I am stuck in the high seas till the end of this week, more or less . . . and I didn’t want to read Flood of Fire in flickers and flashes . . . at least three hours at a stretch would do very well, actually . . . a real blaze . . . let’s see . . .

There were reviews and excerpts and interviews in newsmagazines and papers the whole of the last week of May and first week of June . . . all very nice, but I like to read interviews with Amitav Ghosh . . . and look forward to the launch and reading in Hyderabad, and I hope there is one . . . and the best part would be to have a picture taken with my really favourite writer and have his autograph on the Flood of Fire . . .

Some months back there was small buzz in India around a crime thriller named Lead Tin Yellow by Doug Gunnery. I read reviews and articles in newspapers and newsmagazines about this novel. Why so much attention to this particular crime thriller in India I wondered, when there are so many crime thrillers by all kinds of writers all over the world coming out all the time. The reviews and articles said that the thriller is set in the American Midwest and there were hints that the author is actually a well-known Indian academic, who has taken on the name Doug Gunnery as his nom de plume. It was also hinted that the initials of his name could give a clue. It was all so mysterious initially.

When I read the reviews I saw that the thriller linked a Renaissance painter to a Vietnam War veteran. This fictitious painter, named Paola Astuta, was supposed to be Rembrandt’s assistant, and is famous for creating a vibrant yellow colour by mixing tin with lead, which came to be his signature, sort of. Hence, the title. Astuta’s flaming yellows purportedly made Rembrandt jealous and therefore was not allowed to fulfil his potential or become famous. So, whatever remained of Astuta’s paintings have become rare collector’s items in the modern world, with very few people knowing about his paintings and coveting them assiduously. Into this Renaissance yarn comes a rich Vietnamese who had a collection of Astutas, an American war veteran who takes off with the Astutas during the last days of the Vietnam War, and the war veteran’s two sons. The war veteran hides this treasure for long years, but the secret is somehow leaked and he is chased and killed on a bridge in Massachusetts. The soldier leaves a code behind for his son and the thriller is all about the son deciphering the code, finding the treasure, and tracking down the killers.

This is the general outline of the story. I was intrigued. So many threads – Renaissance, artists, colour, jealousy, Vietnam, art theft, journalist son, American Midwest. I wanted to read the book and see how these threads are strung together. Finally, I bought it and read it and I must say it is really good and so different from many crime thrillers that one has read.

As for the author, he has revealed his real identity. He is indeed a well-known Indian academic. It is all over the place now, you can check it out. Meanwhile, three cheers for Lead Tin Yellow.

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-Matchtrilogy, the first trilogy in the Bernand Samson tri-trilogy … Hook-Line-Sinkeris 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 HookI 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?

After tea and biscuits (on the same Sunday as in the previous post), as Vinod and I came out of the Irani, Vinod asked me if I had read anything by Ross Macdonald. This was a new name to me and I said no, I hadn’t. Vinod then told me that Ross Macdonald was writing around the same time as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and they were considered the ‘holy trinity’ of crime fiction in America. He told me that Ross Macdonald too had a ‘detective’ of his own called Lew Archer, who was a ‘tough, but humane’ detective. Vinod says in one of his posts that had had no idea about this writer till he read The Wycherly Woman, which he found in Abids in March this year and then in June he found three more by Ross Macdonald. And since then he has been hooked. And he asked me not to miss any book by Ross Macdonald, especially if one has enjoyed reading Chandler and Hammett. Ross Macdonald also has a similar style in terms of writing sharp dialogues. So, one more name was added to my list of ‘must-read’ writers.

And though I looked carefully, I didn’t find any Ross Macdonald novels that day at Abids. Back home, as is the norm, I googled and then Wikipedia-ed 'Ross Macdonald' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Macdonald) and got to know quite a bit about him and his novels. According to the entry in Wikipedia, “Macdonald has been called the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries.” This is how Ross Macdonald looked ...

Fedora and all ... 'private-eye' written all over ...

mmm … sounds exciting, I thought … I checked online stores and found the prices too heavy for my wallet … I then wondered if that Indian online second-hand bookstore that I have been visiting on and off (with no great success till now), would have any Ross Macdonald books … well, I went there and looked for books by Ross Macdonaldand found not a single book … total deflation … I tried ‘Macdonald’ only and that search came up with a number of books by one John D. MacDonald… but the only familiar title among these was ‘Cape Fear’ … I remembered it by the name of the film … same book made into a film? If so, he must be a well-known and good writer … back to Wikipedia again to check out this ‘MacDonald’ …

Both writers were born one year apart and were contemporaries, and passed away within three years of each other. In fact, Ross Macdonald, whose real name is Kenneth Millar, experimented with various pseudonyms.

“For his fifth novel, in 1949, he wrote under the name John Macdonald, in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar. He then changed his pen name briefly to John Ross Macdonald, before settling on Ross Macdonald, in order to avoid being confused with fellow mystery writer John D. MacDonald, who wrote under his real name.”

So, there is a connection after all … good … now, to move further … is John D. MacDonald a prolific writer? Oh god, yes … ‘prolific’ describes him … around 75 novels and 5 short story collections … awesome, na … (trying to use new lingo!!) … John D. MacDonald too comes under the ‘hardboiled’ mystery writers’ category like Chandler, Hammett, and Ross Macdonald … these are all ‘hard-boiled’ writers … tough cookies, eh … John D. MacDonald too has his own favourite gumshoe, and wrote 21 novels featuring Travis McGee, an “intelligent and introspective” man, with a “hard cynical streak.” He is a “salvage consultant” and “knight-errant.” “McGee made his living by recovering the loot from thefts and swindles, keeping half to finance his "retirement," which he took in pieces as he went along.”

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._MacDonald)

And ... this is how John D. MacDonald looked like ...

Ah, yes … it was his novel The Executioners, which was made into the movie Cape Fear, in 1962, with Gregory Peck, and it was remade in 1991 by Martin Scorsese …

All these decided me … I went back to the secondhand books site and checked the available titles against the Trevor McGee list … 5 titles … and one collection of John D. MacDonald’s early mystery stories … great … the price ranged from Rs.75 to Rs.90 per title … not bad at all … I tried not to compare the prices with ‘what if I had got these at Abids’ prices … tch tch ... bad habit only ...

And I received these 6 titles by John D. MacDonald yesterday (24th July 2015).

This is the first in the Travis McGee series ... written in 1964 ... this one is a 1984 reprint ... I am happy and relieved that I got the first one in the series ...

Darker than Amber is the seventh in the Travis McGee series and was published in 1966 ... and ha ha ha ... can you believe this? This copy I got is the first edition ... ha ha ha ...

Published in 1970, The Long Lavender Look is the 12th in the series ...

This one is the 15th in the series ... and was published in 1973 ...

Cinnamon Skin was published in 1982 and is the 20th in the Travis McGee series ...

Did you notice something? Each title has a 'colour' word ... unless you see four or five at a time, you wouldn't notice this ... this colour word, suggested by John MacDonald's publisher was supposed to act like a mnemonic device for the readers “...so that when harried travelers in airports looked to buy a book, they could at once see those MacDonald titles they had not yet read.”

And The Good Old Stuff is really the icing on the cake as far this collection is concerned for me ... this is like aged malt or something like that ... this book contains 13 stories of his pre-Travis McGee years ... these stories were published between 1947 and 1952 in magazines like Detective Tales, New Detective Magazine, Doc Savage Magazine, Dime Detective, Mystery Book Magazine, and others ... this edition has an introduction by Francis M. Nevins, Jr. and a foreword by John D. MacDonald ...

I strongly feel I should begin with this good old stuff ...

In my previous two posts, I have been talking about this online secondhand bookshop where I searched and finally found and received 6 books by John D. MacDonald …

Ok, let me end the suspense and reveal the name of this online secondhand books site … not that I wanted to keep it secret or something … it is just that I wanted to have a direct buying experience before telling about it to all of you … most of you might have already visited this site … anyway, the name of the site is direct, as one of those hard-boiled gumshoes would have liked …

www.secondhandbooksindia.com…

I have been visiting this site for the last one month or so in search of books by Simon Brett, Paul Theroux, and others … the hit rate was not great, but was not disappointing and I kept my search on … I like buying 3 to 4 books at a time and wanted to put together a decent number before I bought them …

When Vinod told me about Ross Macdonald, the first thing I did was to check this website … as narrated earlier, instead of ‘Ross,’ I found ‘John D.’ … but I went with ‘John D.’ anyway and after checking online, decided to buy the 5 books featuring the detective Travis McGee and 1 book on John D.’s early mystery stories …

My buying experience was good, the packing was well done, and the books arrived in good condition … I am a satisfied customer … I did a general search for some well-known writers and there are at least a couple of books on each of them … and more books under thrillers and popular fiction … the prices are not very high … but don’t expect Abids street prices … you can get a good book for Rs.75/- … of course, some used books cost more … but again, if you are the type who’d rather sit at home and click books, you have to pay the second-hand bookseller for putting the books together in searchable format for you … and in case you have specific requests, you can always mail and let them know … sort of keeps them on their toes …

The buying process is slightly loopy here … you have to first register, and then ‘deposit’ some money, and then buy books and keep checking as the balance decreases … something like ‘prepaid’ … helps you to maintain your balance!!

So, happy buying then …

It started with a text message from Vinod last Wednesday … he texted me to tell that Amitav Ghosh would be visiting Hyderabad to launch Flood of Fire¸ which was good news indeed … have to finish the novel before that, I responded … I’ll buy it there, Vinod said … and then off-handedly, Btw, saw three Ross Macdonald titles at Best, Lakdikapul. Go grab them. This was also good news!! I had sort of placed an order with another second-hand bookseller who said he had two ‘Ross’ titles, and said so to Vinod and asked him if he could remember the titles … he texted me the names … good, these were different … well, this was exciting! Suddenly Ross Macdonald novels are coming into my orbit … will see if I can get off today early, I said … then Vinod dropped another innocuous bomb … reading all those Hammetts and Chandlers and Leonards have made Vinod very hardboiled and his responses are becoming laconic and crackling … Black Money at BB, YMCA, he texted … What the kangaroo! How the hell did he uncover that?

Anyway, that was the name of another Ross novel … I thought quickly and decided to go to Best Books, YMCA, Secunderabad, as it was comparatively closer … Lakdi-Ka-Pul can wait, for now … I searched for Black Money in the usual places and even asked that obdurate chap who minds the store … he uttered the name a few times and then kept quiet … I had no other alternative but to text Vinod and find out where Black Money was stashed … he helpfully navigated me to that particular shelf … I found a John D. novel first, I didn’t pick it up, as it would have compromised my search … and then lo and behold, Black Money was there … it is a good copy, but I had to pay quite a sum for it, compared to Abids prices, I mean … the next day, while chatting, I told Vinod that I felt like crying when I paid that much … Vinod said, it is a good copy compared to the ones I got. I had planned to pick it up actually but left for people like you. so no ronaa. Kismat samjho mil gayaa… Thank you, Vinod bhai … for facilitating Black Money, my first Ross Macdonald–Lew Archer novel …

There were supposed to be three more Ross Macdonaldnovels at the Lakdi-ka-Pul branch of Best Book Centre (which is actually the HQ of Best Book Centre), according to Vinod’s tip … I had opted to go on Wednesday to the YMCA branch to get Black Money, as it was closer … considering the price I paid for Black Money, I was not very sure about going to Best Book Centre Lakdi-ka-Pul, wondering what the prices there would be … but by Thursday evening, I thought, why not go and see (half the troubles in this world start with ‘why not just go and see..’) … so the next day, I took off in the late afternoon and reached Lakdi-ka-Pul … Best Book Centre is just opposite the Lakdi-ka-Pul bus stand … this was the first time I was visiting the Best Book CentreHQ and I was just amazed at the range and number of books that were arranged in those two long rooms … searching for three books in this sea of books was going to be a difficult task … I took the easy way out and used the search option (i.e. asked the person there to assist me …) he showed me a stack of John D. MacDonald-Trevor McGee books … no, no, the other Macdonald … Ross Macdonald … he then went to the shelf at the end of the room and plucked out two Ross Macdonald-Lew Archer novels and gave it to me … but there was supposed to be three, Vinod told me … never mind, maybe somebody picked up the third one … I was happy with these two ... for the time being … he he … I got these two …

And then the stack of John D. MacDonald-Trevor McGeebooks smiled at me … won’t you even look at the titles, they seemed to ask … how can you go away like that … by now, I was emboldened by the fact that the two Rosses hadn’t cost as much as I had imagined … but these were older and not in as good condition as Black Money… but I had some ‘unspent’ money and I moved towards the John D. MacDonald stack … just to see only (another killer) … and to cut the long story short … I just couldn’t resist … the prices were also considerably modest and I ended up buying 6 John D. MacDonald-Trevor McGee novels … greedy fellow … but what to do ya, that money was marked for books … if I hadn’t bought these books, then the ‘unspent’ money will become sad, no … dil ko khush rakhne ka jai-lib yeh khayal achcha hai…

As I was hauling the haul back to my den … I thought I should tell Vinod that his tip was good as gold and thank him …

Coming back from BB LKP; got 2 Ross McDs…who teesrawala ud gaya shayad…thanks for the tip…

Which two? Small hardbacks?

Ek HB one PB…find a victim & ivory grin…

The third one is another shelf. Poochna tha na bhai.

Woh hamed ali se poocha, une yeh donon booksaan nikaalke diye…tumhaarse poochna tha…woich…

Asal aadmi se nai poochey tum. Kya bhai aisa kaiku kar re aaj kal?

Galti ho gayi bade bhai, tengshung mein bhul gaya ji…agli baar yaad nahin bhooltoon…

Theekh hai. Jaando abhi.

Tumhaara dil nahin, dariya hai, bade bhai…

Bahut khush hua main. Kabhi chai pilaathoon.

I won’t say too much here and let the pictures do the talking …

Ok … just a wee bit, otherwise I will feel odd …

I have been buying books from Best Book Centre for a long long time … I visit their exhibitions at YMCA, Secunderabad, whenever they hold them there and after they set up a permanent shop there, I visit that too … but I visited their main shop at Lakdi-ka-Pul for the first time last week … I was speechless, overwhelmed, and never thought I could see so many secondhand books in two rooms … I went around, and every author worth her/his salt is represented there … all kept in neat piles on the tables and stacked on shelves … I am a total idiot … because earlier I kept thinking that LKP is so far away … I’d have to spend money on auto-rickshaws, can’t depend on buses, etc. … but last week’s visit was a breeze, the kind of first visit that puts a spring in your step and makes you want to go there again and again … there is a direct bus from my place to LKP and back … I just had to explore a bit, that’s all …

After buying the books (that I showcased in the previous post), I asked Mr Hamed Ali at the counter if he would be willing to send books outside Hyderabad if there are requests, and he showed me some India Post receipts saying that he has been sending books to people outside Hyderabad and he would be glad to continue to do so … so, here is the address and contact details … phoning is better … and then you can follow up with emails …

BEST BOOK CENTRE

# 6-1-70/1, 1^ST FLOOR, ABOVE TIP TOP DRY CLEANERS

BESIDE ASHOKA HOTEL

LAKDI-KA-PUL HYDERABAD – 1

PHONE: 040-24761428

MD. HAMED ALI – MOBILE: 9948118272

Email: bestbookhyd@gmail.com

Best Book Centre also has a website … www.bestbookcentre.com

(and if you found the info here, please tell him where you got it from … will get some brownie points … he he he … )

Sorry … wee bit went on just a weeeeee bit longer than intended …. and, now the pictures … I didn't intend to click any pictures, but when I saw these two rooms so full of books, I felt I had to take pictures and used my mobile phone for that ... it is a simple phone, so the pictures are not as sharp as one might want them to be ... but ...

The Sunday we last met (the day which set off this Macd(D)onald frenzy in me…), Vinod also told me about a second-hand bookseller in Mumbai, with whom he had placed an order for Ross Macdonald novels … I couldn’t gather the name then … I asked him again after I came home and he told me that it is one Mr Afzal Ansari who sells secondhand books in Matunga, Mumbai … Vinod gave me Mr Ansari’s number and told me to send him a text message with my email … once Mr Ansari receives my message, he would then send me his list of books as attachment … I then see what I want and send him a mail with my requirements … he sends the books across …

I wanted to find out more about Mr Ansari and while browsing for information, I found this article … http://www.thealternative.in/lifestyle/afzal-matungas-bestselling-bookselling-secret/…

This article reveals quite a lot about Mr Ansari’s passion for books and commitment towards his customers … this article also gives a link to his book lists, and also his phone number … the book lists could be dated and so it is always better to send him a message and wait for him to send the lists to your mail box … Mr Ansari’s phone number is 09967960583 …

I sent a text message to Mr Ansari immediately, and by evening he had sent me a mail with an attachment that contained three lists of books … I went through the lists eagerly to see if any Ross Macdonald novels were still left … I found two and sent my request … he wrote back saying that the books I saw had already been booked by Vinod, and he sent me a list of 5 books, of which 2 each were by Ross and John D., respectively and one by Jonathan Ross … out of these, I already had one John D. novel and told him that I’d glad to have the other four in the list … then there was some toing and froing of mails to decide what was the best way to send the books across … I didn’t want a VPP or COD method, and we finally decided to rely on our good old India Post …

A couple of days later, I received a text message asking me if I would be interested in 2 books by John Dickson Carr … I hadn’t read any books by Carr, and didn’t know about the author either, but no harm in trying a new writer … I was anyway trying out Ross Macdonald and John D. MacDonald …

These 6 books were packed and sent through India Post and I received them on Friday (7 Aug 15) … the books were packed well and the package looked safe and sturdy …

I enjoyed this interaction and made a new book-friend in Mumbai … and received 6 books in really good condition … thanks Mr Ansari, but yeh dil maange more… aah yes, these are the 6 books …

4 novels from the Martin Beck Series - Book haul near Sangeet, Secunderabad

N. S. Madhavan’s Litanies of Dutch Battery … the other book I got at Sangeet along with the Becks on the same day …

MURTY CLASSICAL LIBRARY OF INDIA – THE FIRST FIVE BOOKS

An out-of-print Vaikom Muhammed Basheer book of short stories and a couple more ... Book haul at Abids on 5th April 2015

Vaikom Muhammad Basheer … another out-of-print book resurfaces … split into three (??) …

Baardaan … Necessary Burden … (Tulu terms)

Heaps of Books for Mamoon and One for Me … Abids haul on the last Sunday of April

Mamoon’s Art . . . Her first solo . . .

The HMT Colours of Pilot

Chai, Chai . . . Chai, Chai . . . Bishwanath Ghosh gets off in places where others only stop . . . !

Flood of Fire . . . finally . . .

Lead Tin Yellow by Doug Gunnery . . . An American Crime Thriller by an Indian

A good Sunday haul at Abids…19 July 2015

Looking for Ross Macdonald and finding John D. MacDonald … both 'hard-boiled' crime fiction writers – Part I

Looking for Ross Macdonald and finding John D. MacDonald ... the first packet of JDM novels arrives – Part 2

Online Secondhand Bookshops – One

My first Ross Macdonald - Lew Archer novel

A greedy haul of Macdonalds at Best Book Centre, Lakdi-ka-Pul …

Secondhand Bookshops - Two - Best Book Centre, Lakdi-ka-Pul, Hyderabad …

Secondhand Bookshops – Three – Afzal Ansari of Matunga, Mumbai … and the 6 books I bought from him …