Bookshop is a misnomer for this place where I have found great treasures.
As you walk from Victoria Terminus (sorry, much like ‘Mumbai’, ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus’ is not how I think of that place) towards Flora Fountain, shortly before Turakhia Opticals, you come across an array of books spread on the cobblestones.
To your right is a small staircase, leading up to I don’t recall what. That first time, I was attracted by a display of old copies of Esquire and New Yorker magazines on a rope stretching upwards the length of the staircase.
To the right of that staircase there is a very small ‘room’, whose original purpose defeats me. It is rectangular – very narrow, very long – and it makes an L at the end, a somewhat shorter extension.
The space is crammed floor to ceiling with books, and managed by a man who has read everything and remembers everything.
He lets you browse; when you take your finds over to the rickety table and chair that doubles as cash counter, he glances at the books you have picked out and goes, ‘Oh, so you like courtroom thrillers/books on space/cricket/sport/insert-your-genre-here? Right!’
He scuttles around the shelves and returns with three or four other books, by authors you had never heard of, in the genre of your choice. ‘You’ll love these,’ he will tell you, occasionally adding little synopsis to explain why that particular book is just your thing. ‘If you don’t like it, bring it back – I’ll return your money,’ he would tell me, once my visits assumed a weekly regularity. Through him I discovered authors, expanded horizons. I never needed to return a book he had recommended.
Fifteen years ago – in August 2000 – I was browsing the shelves one evening, on my way back from work, when I stumbled on Soccer in Sun and Shadow. How’s this?, I asked him. “You haven’t read Galeano?!”, he said, in seeming shock. “Wait!”.
I left his shop that day with the soccer book – and Open Veins of Latin America and The Book of Embraces.
I left with an empty wallet; I left behind a promise to pay the balance of my dues in a week’s time.
That night, I entered a world of prose of such pointillist perfection that everything I had read till then paled.
It was the moments he captured that everyone else had missed, but it was also the precise etching of his micro-portraits of people. In a 250 word portrait of Pele, Galeano spoke of his famed parsimony – “Off the field, he never gave a minute of his time, and a coin never fell from his pocket” — and in the very next breath, linked it to the Brazilian superstar’s soccer skills in a line that is a valedictory drum-roll:
For weeks afterwards, I quoted from the book at random.
Over breakfast I told my wife, listen to this, listen to what Galeano writes about Pele. At work, I sent colleagues and friends random snippets. Over a beer in the evenings, I worked the conversation around to soccer just so I could quote another Galeano gem. A discussion on the ‘poverty line’, for instance, was all the cue I needed to say: Oh, but from poverty sometimes comes extraordinary beauty – I mean, would a Eusebio ever have emerged from anywhere other than a shantytown? Galeano wrote a line that summed him up brilliantly:
Taking advantage of their baffled silence — was I suggesting that poverty should be increased so the world would have more soccer stars? — I’d slip in a few other Galeano gems. If the deadline for a column was on me and I could think of nothing to write, I’d write about Galeano – like I did here. If, as part of a World Cup coverage, I was asked to write on the best soccer books of all time, I’d list a few just so I could lead in to Galeano, who I would then quote at length – as I did here. Sometimes, when I couldn’t even invent a reason, I wrote about Galeano anyway — like I did here. It got to the point where wife and friends imposed moratoriums: ‘No quoting Galeano this evening…’
So I’d find the easiest chair in the home and agonize over whether to re-read Soccer once more, savouring each word, each image, or to crack open The Book of Embraces.
Over the years, I thrust the book at everyone who showed the remotest interest in the written word. Each time I gave a copy to a friend, I bought myself a replacement because if there is one thing I’ve learnt, it is that a Galeano book never comes back.
In 2013 I found a friend. And sometime thereafter, we developed a ritual. Each morning, I’d take a screenshot of one page of a Galeano book and email it. I started with Children of the Days, and when that was done 365 days later, moved to Mirrors. Sometime in course of each day, we’d chat about what Galeano “had written that day”.
One day, in the middle of one such conversation, the friend said: “I want to learn to write like Galeano.”
Everyone has a Galeano moment.
Mine came in late 2003. It was a bitter New York winter. It would be close to midnight when I was done with the latest batch of edits for India Abroad, the paper I was working on at the time. My options were to walk the 15 blocks to my home, with needles of cold lancing through me every step of the way and water dripping unnoticed from my frozen nose, or to stay snug in my warm cabin, where it was toasty from the heater, and warmly welcoming from the books piled high on shelves and heaped on the floor.
Idle minds spawn ridiculous thoughts. What if, I thought one night, I could do with cricket what Galeano did with soccer? What if I could identify seminal moments, remarkable players, and capture each in about 150 words of perfect prose? (It would be “perfect” prose, of course — I was going to ‘write like Galeano’, after all).
And it would be easy, really. Each day, one moment, or one player; about 200 words, max. I was used to writing 2000-word match reports and then coming back and doing it again the next day. This would be a breeze.
I could start with the 1996 World Cup — the first cricket tournament I covered, for Rediff. And lead with that moment, late into the evening of March 14, when Eden Gardens burned flaming orange with mob fury and out in the middle, a lone man trudged back towards the pavilion, head bent in despair and shame, heedless of the tears that streamed down his face. It would capture perfectly the good and the bad of sport… it would make people gasp… it would make Galeano himself proud to have inspired such excellence…
And so I wrote. Of Vinod Kambli, forlorn amidst the ruins of the Gardens that night, and how it seemed fitting that it was this flighty boy from a Kanjur Marg slum that felt the pain most deeply. Of the first sighting of a Sourav Ganguly cover drive. Of a dust storm in Sharjah and a lone man waging a lone battle that made us believe “in the existence of immortality”…
One night — by then I had written a dozen or so ‘chapters’ — I made myself some coffee and re-read what I had written.
Everyone has a Galeano moment.
It is not the moment when ambition strikes and you tell yourself you want to write like Galeano.
It is the moment when reality bites, and you realise you can’t.
RIP, Eduardo, and thank you very much.
Maybe one day…
This post has been reproduced with the permission of the author.
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As you walk from Victoria Terminus (sorry, much like ‘Mumbai’, ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus’ is not how I think of that place) towards Flora Fountain, shortly before Turakhia Opticals, you come across an array of books spread on the cobblestones.
To your right is a small staircase, leading up to I don’t recall what. That first time, I was attracted by a display of old copies of Esquire and New Yorker magazines on a rope stretching upwards the length of the staircase.
To the right of that staircase there is a very small ‘room’, whose original purpose defeats me. It is rectangular – very narrow, very long – and it makes an L at the end, a somewhat shorter extension.
The space is crammed floor to ceiling with books, and managed by a man who has read everything and remembers everything.
He lets you browse; when you take your finds over to the rickety table and chair that doubles as cash counter, he glances at the books you have picked out and goes, ‘Oh, so you like courtroom thrillers/books on space/cricket/sport/insert-your-genre-here? Right!’
He scuttles around the shelves and returns with three or four other books, by authors you had never heard of, in the genre of your choice. ‘You’ll love these,’ he will tell you, occasionally adding little synopsis to explain why that particular book is just your thing. ‘If you don’t like it, bring it back – I’ll return your money,’ he would tell me, once my visits assumed a weekly regularity. Through him I discovered authors, expanded horizons. I never needed to return a book he had recommended.
Fifteen years ago – in August 2000 – I was browsing the shelves one evening, on my way back from work, when I stumbled on Soccer in Sun and Shadow. How’s this?, I asked him. “You haven’t read Galeano?!”, he said, in seeming shock. “Wait!”.
I left his shop that day with the soccer book – and Open Veins of Latin America and The Book of Embraces.
I left with an empty wallet; I left behind a promise to pay the balance of my dues in a week’s time.
That night, I entered a world of prose of such pointillist perfection that everything I had read till then paled.
It was the moments he captured that everyone else had missed, but it was also the precise etching of his micro-portraits of people. In a 250 word portrait of Pele, Galeano spoke of his famed parsimony – “Off the field, he never gave a minute of his time, and a coin never fell from his pocket” — and in the very next breath, linked it to the Brazilian superstar’s soccer skills in a line that is a valedictory drum-roll:
Those of us who were lucky to see him play received alms of extraordinary beauty: moments so worthy of immortality that they make us believe immortality exists.
For weeks afterwards, I quoted from the book at random.
Over breakfast I told my wife, listen to this, listen to what Galeano writes about Pele. At work, I sent colleagues and friends random snippets. Over a beer in the evenings, I worked the conversation around to soccer just so I could quote another Galeano gem. A discussion on the ‘poverty line’, for instance, was all the cue I needed to say: Oh, but from poverty sometimes comes extraordinary beauty – I mean, would a Eusebio ever have emerged from anywhere other than a shantytown? Galeano wrote a line that summed him up brilliantly:
He set foot on the field, running as only someone with police or poverty nipping at his heels could run.
Taking advantage of their baffled silence — was I suggesting that poverty should be increased so the world would have more soccer stars? — I’d slip in a few other Galeano gems. If the deadline for a column was on me and I could think of nothing to write, I’d write about Galeano – like I did here. If, as part of a World Cup coverage, I was asked to write on the best soccer books of all time, I’d list a few just so I could lead in to Galeano, who I would then quote at length – as I did here. Sometimes, when I couldn’t even invent a reason, I wrote about Galeano anyway — like I did here. It got to the point where wife and friends imposed moratoriums: ‘No quoting Galeano this evening…’
So I’d find the easiest chair in the home and agonize over whether to re-read Soccer once more, savouring each word, each image, or to crack open The Book of Embraces.
Over the years, I thrust the book at everyone who showed the remotest interest in the written word. Each time I gave a copy to a friend, I bought myself a replacement because if there is one thing I’ve learnt, it is that a Galeano book never comes back.
In 2013 I found a friend. And sometime thereafter, we developed a ritual. Each morning, I’d take a screenshot of one page of a Galeano book and email it. I started with Children of the Days, and when that was done 365 days later, moved to Mirrors. Sometime in course of each day, we’d chat about what Galeano “had written that day”.
One day, in the middle of one such conversation, the friend said: “I want to learn to write like Galeano.”
Everyone has a Galeano moment.
Mine came in late 2003. It was a bitter New York winter. It would be close to midnight when I was done with the latest batch of edits for India Abroad, the paper I was working on at the time. My options were to walk the 15 blocks to my home, with needles of cold lancing through me every step of the way and water dripping unnoticed from my frozen nose, or to stay snug in my warm cabin, where it was toasty from the heater, and warmly welcoming from the books piled high on shelves and heaped on the floor.
Idle minds spawn ridiculous thoughts. What if, I thought one night, I could do with cricket what Galeano did with soccer? What if I could identify seminal moments, remarkable players, and capture each in about 150 words of perfect prose? (It would be “perfect” prose, of course — I was going to ‘write like Galeano’, after all).
And it would be easy, really. Each day, one moment, or one player; about 200 words, max. I was used to writing 2000-word match reports and then coming back and doing it again the next day. This would be a breeze.
I could start with the 1996 World Cup — the first cricket tournament I covered, for Rediff. And lead with that moment, late into the evening of March 14, when Eden Gardens burned flaming orange with mob fury and out in the middle, a lone man trudged back towards the pavilion, head bent in despair and shame, heedless of the tears that streamed down his face. It would capture perfectly the good and the bad of sport… it would make people gasp… it would make Galeano himself proud to have inspired such excellence…
And so I wrote. Of Vinod Kambli, forlorn amidst the ruins of the Gardens that night, and how it seemed fitting that it was this flighty boy from a Kanjur Marg slum that felt the pain most deeply. Of the first sighting of a Sourav Ganguly cover drive. Of a dust storm in Sharjah and a lone man waging a lone battle that made us believe “in the existence of immortality”…
One night — by then I had written a dozen or so ‘chapters’ — I made myself some coffee and re-read what I had written.
Everyone has a Galeano moment.
It is not the moment when ambition strikes and you tell yourself you want to write like Galeano.
It is the moment when reality bites, and you realise you can’t.
RIP, Eduardo, and thank you very much.
Maybe one day…
This post has been reproduced with the permission of the author.