Halfchai

Hand-me-down

I know my blog hasn’t been forgotten, but it has been neglected. After talking to a friend last night, I felt bad about leaving it dormant. I’ve been wanting to write, but with the onset of the marriage season, having “Want to be my Chammak Challo?” blare into my ears is not conducive to sentence formation.

Coming back to this post- The trip to Bangalore was lovely. One Saturday, Somesh and I met at Koshy’s, fueled ourselves with pots of tea and multiple courses of breakfast and sauntered down Church Street. Very reminiscent of Srishti, except I didn’t have to catch the 285M back. 

As we entered Blossoms, conversation dwindled and we peered over the set of graphic novels before digging into piles of old books. Rarely did we look at titles. Everything hardbound, foil-stamped was immediately picked out. Amidst those piles, I found this book by Tolstoy. Flip thorough the pages and you can see impressions of type on the otherside- Letterpress! I loved the layout and the generous margins. Apparently the generous margins were also an invitation to some kid to scribble. I’ve spent considerable time with an eraser.

There’s something very comforting and intriguing about old second hand books. I’m always looking for a story besides the one in the book.

We were quite content balancing piles of books while trying to grab some more. Mr. Kumar, I’m convinced is sleeping on a bed of Maugham books. Thank you for Cakes and Ale.

This book was from my Nana’s collection. I greedily stuffed this along with the Redear’s Digest condensed books into my already overflowing suitcase. I love foil-stamped hardbound books. This one is Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.