Of Books and Bombay

I'm Bombay born, Bombay bred, not to mention Bombay addicted. I've lived here for five-sixths of my life. Why then am I pining for Gurgaon which has been no more than the quintessential 'rainbasera'?

It's just that I have almost run through the cache of books bought in Delhi aeons ago. Reading them ever so infrequently, to make them 'last longer', hasn't helped.

Which made me realise that a fair bit of stuff I read is the 'crazy stuff no one's ever heard of'. Not too many Bombay bookshopwallahs, atleast. They haven't heard of Paul Gallico, for instance. Or Robert Heinlein. (Come to think of it, they've heard of Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Why this unfair treatment to the third of the Big Three?).

I found precisely three Heinleins here in over a year. And haven't found any of the Douglas Hofstadters or Jamila Gavins Delhi pals rave about. It isn't even in strange phoren authors that Delhi scores (though that may have been because of the floating international population)... it is also the Premchands and Amrita Pritams and Saadat Hassan Mantos....

My corner bookstore in Gurgaon was far more tuned to unusual books than even the Strand's here. Hell, I even found an interesting book from China at Nizamuddin railway station. My Bambai is losing out to the Dally.

To give Bombay a fair chance, Maybe I'm not looking hard enough. Or looking in the wrong place.

Finally

After years of 'go get a blog', I finally did.

Some people will be happy :)