BY K. C. BHATT
The book-shop had just opened and it was quarter-past-ten on the Friday morning.
As soon I entered the shop I saw on the left kept on the table dozens of unsold copies of a book titled Sold.
I knew it was a table where the books on discount were displayed before one climbed the steps to enter the shop-proper, past the billing counter, to find more books.
I checked the price of it to find that it was being sold at a tenth of the price mentioned on the cover.
Earlier too I have found many books there on that table from various other writers which were no less celebrated.
I distinctly remember to have discovered there a title of a model-turned-Indian-writer which has nearly a dozen photographs of her on the back of her novel.
Not to mention the pulp fiction which was so popular only a few decades back but had no taker now, from the likes of Wilber Smith, for example.
The clerks and staffs in the shop had just taken their seats and they were sipping their first tea in office–relieved possibly to have made it to the office in time, fighting the notorious traffic of the city at that hour.
Dipawali festival was to start from the next day and they possibly were already preparing for the holidays ahead. So they were talking with each other, not looking at the few customers who already were checking or browsing the books inside.
Reading population has steadily increased in Kathmandu over the years.
As I too entered the shop-proper I found the first few tables and shelves full of books just arrived.
It was a surprise to find a shelf full of many titles of V S Naipaul. I checked the price of his thin volumes like Literary Occasions and India a Wounded Civilization. I realized that their cost has nearly doubled than the edition I bought of these books a few years back. I recalled however, that in the meanwhile, the writer has passed away. So if I bought one of his books now, I will do so with a heaviness in my heart.
Similar would be the case with Philip Roth. Writers you like pique you and you detest them often when they are alive but feel a sadness when they are no more for there is no one for you to look into the future and explain the matters. It is like having an additional sense to understand and deal with life.
You possibly never feel the same for anyone else you have not met ever what you feel for a writer you like.
There were other new arrivals from writers like Mark Tully and Pico Iyer and a few others, who sell well — as well; and a new edition of their books is always on display, at times with a different cover to charm a reader.
I was looking for a book of George Orwell, which was stored in the upper floors of the shop always along with other classical writers.
I found that the book I was looking for was available but the cost was way too much for a work whose copyright has expired and any printer can print and sell it.
Troubled by the scandals life brings one every other day, I prefer books to provide me some escape.
I felt scandalized again though this morning, while I saw yet another celebrated book, which was so much talked about by the newspapers recently and the people in book festivals and industry, being sold at a junk price.
However, finally it was reassuring to find that good writing never loses its value and that the not-so-good writing cannot go much far no matter how much puffed it is.
My apprehension about a new celebrated book has been often proved correct, and I wait for the hype to die down before I decide to go for it.
If it lingers as a celebrated book I will read it in due course. If it soon appears in the discount section of a book-shop at a junk price then it was never worth the bother.
To uphold a recent intellectual fashion comes with its risks.
(PO Box 20460, Kathmandu.)
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