Louisa Ermelino

Reading in Ashram Town
March 30, 2007

Just arrived in Pondicherry, still carrying Catch-22 with no thought of doing much besides having it weigh down my luggage (the way it did all those years ago). My traveling companion, Durga Ghandi, wanted to buy Kiran Desai's book in Delhi, but I said no, that I had a copy back home she could have it. So she picked up a vintage edition of Anita Desai's 1978 story collection Games at Twilight. I've only read one and a half stories, both set in India. Some wonderful turns of phrase: "The scabby oil-slick son of a brahmin priest." I've been reading the second story for three days. These Tamil Nadu temples are distracting, not to mention it's almost 100 degrees. Durga has been reading Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World (Two books in one as she calls it; 500-plus pages of terminal and interminable romance.) It was a travel book consolation prize from her 192 Books guru because she did not want to take her signed hardcover edition of, yes, The Inheritance of Loss.

Looking for an English bookstore in Pondy has been an experience. Many religious bookstores. This is Ashram town. Devotees of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are not big readers of contemporary lit, it seems, but finally we found Higgenbottoms and there was an English language section: Jack Welch, Jeffrey Archer, many many business books and, voila (Pondy was a French colony), Durga uncovered a hardcover of Pankaj Mishra's The Romantics, set in Benares.  Originally published by Random House in 2000, this edition is India Ink and printed in Delhi with a raven icon looking up on the title page and looking down on the copyright page.

Its all in the details.

Posted by Louisa Ermelino on March 30, 2007 | Comments (0)