As I was crossing a street in some part of Jalgaon, I came across a little book shop. It was a like a typical Indian tapri. To be clear it indeed was a tapri. The old man, the owner of that shop, evidently had to sustain by selling cigarettes, paanmasalas, gutkas and similar stuff. Presumably he couldn't sustain himself by selling only the books. And the books too, which no one reads anymore. I stopped to have a look. English Classics interested me more than anything else. Sadly they were the most torn out pieces amongst the whole) entire bunch. My eyes smiled after detecting George Eliot, Henry James, Thackeray and alike. What suprised me the most however was the fact that how passionate the old man was while showing and talking about his books. Particularly when I said he had very good bunch of classic books. He grew more and more passionate as I was looking for everything in his little tapri. And he knew each and every book and could discern what each particular book was about. For instance, I saw couple of works of Arundhati Roy and asked for the price. He then went on to explain when the book was published and how good the book was, and for what reasons.
There was a sense of contagious respect in his way of handling his books and the way he talked about them. As my interest seemed to be on mostly classics, he guessed what kind of books I actually wanted, and to my suprise he produced a brand new copy of Gone With The Wind out of a corner! And with such pride and weight in his voice he introduced the book. Though it was a little expensive than what I planned to spend. As he was bringing more and more such books with certain familiarity, it was quite apparent that he spent a lot of time with them and probably read hefty lot of them. At one point, when asked whether he had any Dan Brown books, he went on to name all of his bibliography with exact chronological order! I was looking through all his books admirably, he took it as a compliment and exaggerated a little claiming that I could not get such books anywhere in India. Or that the some of the books he had are no longer published.
I suddenly caught myself looking a couple of books of Rushdie. One of them was The Satanic Verses. When I inquired about the rate the answer was pleasingly surprising. He said its a banned book and it will be expensive, and he would not take anything less than 750/-. This is a rarity in where, a book is treated more than a mere commodity to be bought and sold. He equated the worth of the book with its impact and its notoriety. It really confirmed the fact that he actually was personally involved in these books, in his little tapri. It also made me think about the time where people cared so much about the books that they were interested in paying any amount of money for books like The Satanic Verses. And it was quite admirable that one was so proud and defensive about them. There were many such moments while I was there.
So, for about little more than half an hour I glanced through most of his stock and settled on few classics. But as soon as I started bargaining, which I am very poor at, he grew aggressive and irritable. Of course he was up for bargaining but after some time he turned, to my surprise, downright repulsive. He at last said,
"I don't care if you take these books or not. I am not going to bargain any further. I will let them worn out or give them in raddi. But I won't give them to you less than what I have asked." And so he went on to lecture about the nescience of troubled youth like myself. He told me to check the prices online. And yes, they were in fact very expensive. He was asking even less than a half of what it cost me online. To be fair, I wasn't really obsessive about having them really cheap, but was mainly concerned about not having to spend more that what was fair. I tried to explain it but my idiotic social intelligence only allowed me to mumble and say "uhm... yes... I... I... understand baba". Eventually I settled on two classics. A collection of George Eliot and William Thackeray. He did not let me bargain and got his settled price. He was furious. And I was flustered. He was grumpy all the while, even after I was all set to be going. I tried to be cheerful about it but couldn't because of his visible irritation. So it went very awkward at the end. And I eventually left with my two books hurriedly. I was angry for quite a long time down the street, until I realized that perhaps I made a wrong person angry.
Here are some glimpses of his precious tapri
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