for the weekend, so I went and bought those books last night.

Almost committed a social faux pas with the MR book stall guy. He normally prices books very high, and is quite happy (I think!) to give me a 20% discount on whatever I buy. And yesterday, me and sasi go there – and to my surprise, he refuses to lower the price by anything more than 10 rupees.

“This is unfair”, I say. “I thought you would give this to me for less!”

“Arrey, sir, you won’t find these books anywhere else. This is the best price I can offer you.”
“No, no, no!”
“Yes, yes, yes!”

and so on and forth.

And the problem was, those books were really good. Top of it, I saw something else on the shelves. The Tintin Companion by Michael Farr, one of the best books ever written on comics, or so the legends say. And it was priced (in terms of Market Price) very decently – 650 rupees. The book sells in Walden for 1395. So I ask him, “How much would you sell that for?” , with just the right amount of nonchalance. Meantime, I am trying hard not to pant with lust. He says he can lower the price by 50 rupees, not more. It was getting to be a frustrating deal. And all the time, the guy was saying things like, “Take them. Take them. You can pay me later, and if you don’t like them, you can return them, no problem.” That’s the usual modus operandi to get me to buy books even when I don’t have the money. That guy knows a junkie when he sees one. He has seen me for the past…four years.

So I got frustrated and angry. There were other customers waiting. Sasi was getting restive too, we had two more places to go, to get cds and check out some more books. Gave him 500 rupees, as a deposit and took everything I wanted.

Right.

a vcd-buying spree, then a trip to the MR stall at Abids ( the other one, the one I went to first, is at Panjagutta), and suddenly we realise that we left some cds back at the Panjagutta stall. Called him up, and said we were coming by.

We reached the stall again, and just as we got the cds, this guy smiles and gives me a consolidated bill of how much I have to pay. I note, with surprise, that he has priced them with quite good discounts, even though he was saying otherwise.

And then it hit me.

There were other customers around then! Poor chap, had I persisted, most likely the other people would also have asked him for discounts, and of course, he can’t say things like “beatzo is a privileged customer.” and he would have lost out on a lot of sales.

Sometimes I tend to think the worst about other people. I tend to think too much on my terms and my perspective. That has to change, really.

So finally, the books I bought:-

1) The Tintin Companion – Michael Farr.
2) Fantasy Masterworks:Elric of Melnibone – Michael Moorcock.
3) The DreamThief’s Daughter:A Tale of the Albino – Michael Moorcock.
4) The Complete Guide To Middle Earth – Robert Foster
5) The Mammoth book of new Sherlock Holmes Adventures.

Orion books has done an amazing job in reprinting some hard-to-find titles in sci-fi and fantasy under their Sci-Fi Masterworks and Fantasy Masterworks imprints. Most of the books ( all of them described here ) are available in Best and MR, so will just have to buy whatever I want ( what I want are the fantasy ones, the latter books of the Amber series by Zelazny, the Conan books by Howard, Philip K Dick and Richard Matheson )

I also finished reading Philip K Dick’s Dr Bloodmoney last night. Probably it will be the only book I read in which a benign tumour ( a benign talking tumour) saves the day. Really weird shit, and I loved it. Nuclear paranoia, a guy who was supposed to have been the first human settler on Mars, and is now the last DJ on earth. ( he plays readings of Of Human Bondage for people from an orbitting satellite), talking dogs, musical rats and other animals. Very funny at parts, especially when a horse (named Edward of Wales, ha , ha, i found that hilarious) gets eaten by hungry hoboes when he has been parked near a boathouse.

I have now need of extremely light-hearted reading, and so I have taken up The Princess Diaries vol 1 by Meg Cabot. Needless to say, the storyline has very less in common with the movie. Who cares?