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August 19, 2005
Hooked and booked
This is my Mumbai Mirror piece that appeared today.
“I want ‘The Invincible Man’?” I firmly insisted on picking up this book, the first time, Dad took me to Abbas Circulating Library on the south-west corner of King’s Circle.
I must have been 7 years old and had just come across the word “Invincible” somewhere and it remained stuck in my mind. When I saw this Enid Blyton title, I forced my unconvinced Dad to pick it up. That was my first “Fatty” book and as it turned out, it was actually “The Invisible Man”, the seventh in the series. For the next year or so, someone would come with me to Abbas to change books weekly and within a year I had managed to get through the entire Fatty series. Then came the Famous Five, the Secret Seven followed by Jupiter Jones, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Along with these were the Batman/Superman, Phantom/Mandrake and the Spiderman/Fantastic Four comics as well as the Richie Rich, Casper and Archies comics and digests.
My reading habits were entirely supported by Abbas in those days and I don’t remember books being bought for me, except for some Amar Chitra Kathas. Abbas in those days, was a non-air-conditioned shop with a characteristic, musty smell of old books and moldy furniture. The rentals were very affordable and once you were a regular, Abbas often let minor late charges slip by.
By the time we were in the 10th , along with Alistair MacLean, we started furtively exploring James Hadley Chase and a couple of years later, Harold Robbins and Jackie Collins. I also ran through all the L’amours and some other Westerns. In parallel, started my love affair with Wodehouse and the sci-fi greats such as Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein.
It was then that I realized that there was a world outside Abbas. I joined the British Council and realized that there were good authors outside the popular realm as well. But there were times when neither Abbas nor the British Council could help, which is when the road-side booksellers at King’s Circle, would come to the rescue. Call it coincidence or my fortune, but each time I wanted an Asimov Foundation title, especially after having immediately finished reading the previous one, or a Tolkien, it was available on the road, at amazingly cheap prices. As were Anita Desais, John Irvings and Vikram Seths.
But as my tastes veered to obscure noire and sci-fi authors (including Philip Dick in those days), it was time to take succour with Smoker’s Corner on PM road. Though both were always helpful, Mr. Bootwala always had something more up his sleeve than Mr. Shanbhag of the nearby Strand Book House.
Abbas also moved on. He added video rentals and in the later years, video, CD and DVD rentals. The original place became a Baskin Robbins and is now a farsan place and he moved upstairs into a smaller, sterile, air-conditioned loft, completely destroying the charm of the old place. And yet, while other libraries have fallen by the wayside, Abbas has survived! Innovating and keeping pace with changing reading patterns and trends, he’s always had all the popular books and comics available. Where else would all the women in Matunga get their Mills and Boons to satiate/feed their romantic desires?
As I finish the Half-Blood Prince, it’s all come a full-circle. From Blyton to Rowling, from Fatty to Potter! And Abbas, making it all easily available!
Posted by bhavinj at August 19, 2005 08:35 AM
Comments
MFM,
Great entry. Traces almost to a T - my own trajectory - down to discovering the joys of the British Council library (which was way better stocked than the American one).
The only difference was that I frequented "Sunil Book House" in Nana Chowk. But my hubby is an Abbas "graduate" as he grew up in Sion.
Talking of the Kings Circle sidewalk book sellers, my son bought a set of RinTin comic books there a few years back when he was about 10. We still have them, and just the other day he told me that he has read them about 5 times! (I don't know if they are sold here in the US).
I think that the RinTin books will, in his mind, forever be associated with a childhood trip to Mumbai, buying the books off a street, reading them in a swealteringly hot apt and then rereading them here at home.
The books we read, how we choose them and how we acquire them - all become an important tracing of the arc of our lives.
I am struck by how those of our generation in India started out reading English (British) writers, and then moved on to American ones. Seems to be a tracing of the trajectory of the centers of influence in larger geo-political/cultural matters. We don't generally see such things affecting the everyday lives of ordinary folk. But seems like they do.
Posted by: Me at August 28, 2005 05:17 PM
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