I've had a stressful day. I'm in Pune, India, consulting for a humanitarian aid NGO and training to be a water purification specialist for refugee camps. I've been up since 5:30 a.m., I'm adjusting to a new place, new food, people staring at me all the time like I'm a freak; I'm disciplining myself to smile back warmly, learning new information, lining up the next job, planning research for the next novel, studying French, managing the sublet of my house in another country; by 8 p.m., I was stressed. I needed a drink, but -- because I'm going to Chiplune, in rural Maharashtra, tomorrow to document disaster risk reduction programming in a landslide zone; departure time: 5:00 a.m. -- I needed first to buy a small duffel bag and a notebook and pen. (Somehow I have two mobile phones, two laptops, a camera, a camcorder, an iPod, an mp3 player, a flash drive and an external hard drive with me, but no notebook.)
On my way down Paud Road in Kothrud, Pune, in search of a notebook, I passed a sheet spread out on the rubble at the side of the road (what passes for sidewalk). On the sheet were copies of books, mostly used. I began scanning the titles. A man, the bookseller, heaved himself towards me, and I waved my hands to indicate that I didn't want any intrusion on my browsing. Jeffrey Archer, P.G. Wodehouse, John Grisham. Blink. Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, a book that'd been on my father's bookshelf my entire childhood. The Warren Buffet Way. Four copies of The Earth Is Flat. The Greatness Guide by Robin Sharma. Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul I, II AND III. A wide assortment of Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist, Brida, The Witch of Portobello, Like the Flowing River, The Zahir. The Harry Potter series, including Tales of the Beetle Bard. White Tiger, Inheritance of Loss; How Opal Metha Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.
A slim volume caught my attention: The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Short-listed for the Booker. I'd heard of it. I hadn't seriously considered reading it until it was in my hands. I approached the bookseller and negotiated, ultimately paying less than two dollars.
As I slipped the book in my bag and headed off in search of my notebook, I noticed that my mood was perceptibly lightened. I felt positively buoyant. I had no doubt that my levity was thanks to browsing. In glancing over unrelated titles and drawing connections between them ("So this is how Indians see the U.S.," "So these are the titles that transcend the preference of regional and natonal markets"), in giving time to titles that I wouldn't have chosen (circumstances being conducive) to mull, I'd dislodged the neurotic miasma that'd been souring my evening.
My newfound cheeriness wasn't impaired by the discovery that I'd purchased a counterfeit book -- decent cover but poorly bound and with wobbly centering of the printing on the page -- or the follow-on conclusion that I'd way overpaid.
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