I went to crosswords yesterday after three years may be. Please do not get surprised because it’s not on my way. I saw a board SALE from outside and immediately went in. Thousands of titles lying on the shelf and table and discount were up to 50 per cent.
Most of the books were really ordinary Dan Brown, Robin Cook, Sidney Sheldon, Paulo Coelho, Orhan Pamuk and many more for which you don’t need an discount. These titles are always available from Rs 50 to 150 at any road side shop in fountain. I was bored. I saw the entire collection twice but couldn’t find anything interesting. Some good titles I already had.
I must mention that they had en entire collection of Noam Chomsky and Karen Armstrong. Finally I got a story book Where The Jackals Howl by Amos Oz.
But a book shelf with regional books attracted me the most. It had Marathi, Hindi and Gujarati books. I was happy to see them. Surprisingly, in the Marathi collection books, the store had all books by Bhalchandra Nemade, one of the great modernist writers in Marathi. They had Kosala, Bidhar, Zool, Jarila and Hool. Some other good authors like Uddhav Shelke, Shyam Manohar and Rangnath Pathare were also in the collection. I was very happy to see the small Marathi collection among western, American and English Indian authors.
There is a common complaint from publishers that Marathi books have no buyers. But I think if available easily at any book store or at least the big one like Crossroads would definitely have buyers.
