Slip Slidin’ Away

If someone who didn’t know asked me what the main ingredient for rasam was, I would have to answer- tomatoes. Yet, one barely associates them love apples with the steamy memories of the best piping hot rasams we’ve carefully sipped. Just the right amount of water, the careful tickle of the fingers to pick out just the right amount of spices, the hiss with the introduction of mustard seeds- tomatoes play but a bit-part role in the grand magic of rasam.

Such is also the magic of bookstores. Anything and everything from a cushion on the floor at the end of a long shelf, to a sitting ladder to reach for the dusty tomes at the top, my favourite bookstores have always been more about the browsing experience, even more than the buys themselves. The inscriptions on the first page of many a second-hand book in a makeshift street market have touched my heart. Sometimes, even overall disorganisation has made book-searching memorable; swimming through a pile of dog-eared, sulphur-teared copies looking for that elusive gem gives that heady feeling that Scrooge McDuck must have when backstroking his way through his money pool. Quite often, it’s the most fickle variables that bookmark a store in the memory, like the primly dressed man in the business section, the hep homemaker in the cookery area, next to the hippie in the travel section, or the giggling-gaggling teenagers “woo-hoo”ing whenever they spot a favourite in the chick-lit section. Or, of course, if you get (un)lucky, you could spot me secretly trying to finish the ultra-expensive Complete Calvin and Hobbes Collection.

P.S. - On that note, if you’re anywhere in and around Delhi, avoid Om Book Shop. For all kinds of reasons. Reliance’s Time-Out has a god-amazing selection, but makes book-searching seem like grocery shopping (something they are managing to do with every retail venture of theirs).