The Seller of Pirated-Books

The illegal but very open business of selling pirated books fascinates me. I think it is terrible that the entire publishing industry (authors, editors, publishers) is being subverted by the makers of pirated editions. But I seem to be in the minority here, because all these roadside sidewalk vendors are doing very good business. The authorities who should be cracking down on it are ignoring it, and people who should know better are buying the books.

I met one young vendor in Matunga in Mumbai who was surprisingly open about his business. Amidst all his shrink-wrapped pirated books, I spotted an original non-pirated hardbound version of the latest Dan Brown book, The Lost Symbol.
“How much is that?” I asked more out of curiosity than a desire to purchase.
“Oh, that is an original copy. I can only sell it for 590 Rupees.” That was quite a bit more expensive that the pirated books which typically cost 50 Rupees or less.
“How about that one?” I was pointing at Chetan Bhagat’s latest book – 2 States. My wife and I had been to the author’s book launch in Mumbai just the previous week and I was surprised that it had already made its way to the roadside vendors.
“The cost is 95 Rupees. I can give it to you for 85.”
“Is that an original copy?”
“Yes, it is.” He then explained to me that the pricing was such that making pirated copies was not immediately necessary.

The publishers, Rupa & Co, have cleverly priced it at 95 Rupees, an amount the buyers didn’t mind paying. When it comes to books priced at 300 Rupees or more, many of the same buyers don’t seem to mind buying pirated copies instead.

The vendor then went on to say, “That is a very new book. It takes 2 months to make the copies and get them to us.”
“Where do the copies of the books get printed?” I asked because I have always wondered.
That was the only time he hesitated and didn’t give me a straight answer. I let it go.

“Are you from Bengal?” I asked him, because I thought I detected his accent.
“No sir,” he said. “I am from Bihar.”
“You have a very impressive collection of books,” I said, which was true. Though they were all pirated books he seemed to carry a good cross-section of the bestselling books from India and the US.
“I have been in the business for 9 years now,” he said. “So I know what sells and I stock only those.” On his own, he then said that he could name all the Chetan Bhagat books, in the order in which they had been published. He named all 4 as proof of his claim. He said he also knew all the books by Robin Sharma, and all the other bestselling authors as well.
“If someone wants children’s books, I can give them those. If someone wants a stock market book, I know which books to offer even if I don’t have what they are asking for.”

“How do you know about all these books? Can you read English?”
“No I can’t. But I know the covers.”
He was obviously a smart man. Thinking that a working knowledge of English would help him I asked, “Why don’t you learn English? Are you not interested?”
“Very interested, sir. But I have no time. I set up my shop at 10am and I am here till 10pm, sometimes 11pm. I work all seven days of the week.”

Where to find good books

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

One thing I really miss about not living in the US is access to new books. Thanks to the public library system there, I had access to lots and lots of books. And I used to bring home dozens and skim through many, since reading all of them was not physically possible.

Actually, right on the pavement outside our temporary apartment in Bangalore, tons of good books are being sold. And they are dirt cheap too. But there is one small catch. They are all pirated books.

In some ways, I admire whoever it is that prints these. They seem to be gauging the pulse of the reading audience very well. Tom Friedman, and Arvind Adiga and Paul Coelho are staples and most bestsellers make it here.

The quality of these books however, is pitiful – extremely light print on thin pulpy paper. I am even willing to overlook the lack of quality. But I am realizing that somewhere along the way copyrights and intellectual property have become meaningful to me. Or maybe all those movie DVD’s that started with the “Piracy is Stealing” ads have had an impact.

So I seek out second-hand bookshops or the Indian editions in real bookstores. But I have stayed away from the roadside vendors and their pirated books. For now.

From Beirut to Jerusalem - Book

“Why can’t the Israelis and the Palestinians stop fighting and just get along?” I used to wonder from the comfort of my couch in America, when violent images and news from the BBC World Service about that part of the Middle East disturbed my suburban peace.

I am quite sure that I am not the only one guilty of such simplistic thinking. Tom Friedman’s book, “From Beirut to Jerusalem” tells us why.

It is a book of his 10 years living in and reporting from Lebanon and Israel. It was written exactly 20 years ago, but is still just as relevant today.

Once in a long while, a book about a place comes out which is better than even going to that place. FBTJ is definitely one such book. Less than a year ago, I was in Israel and we visited Jerusalem and the West Bank. But there is no way that wandering about as a tourist for 10 days can compare with the writings of an insightful journalist who’s spent years there.

Friedman is a three time(!) Pulitzer-winner, and he won the National Book Award for this book. With a newspaperman’s eye for telling anecdotes and a novelist’s ability with visual metaphors he makes this book very readable, though it is not light reading by any means. In the book, we meet the frustrated Palestinian young woman who says “Arafat is the stone we throw at the world,” and the top Israeli officer who is so worried about the possible consequences of the intifada that he privately admits, “The sooner the Palestinians return to terrorism, the better it will be for us.”

The book helped me understand how the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have different goals from the Palestinians in Lebanon and Jordan and Syria and from the Israeli Arabs. (I will go so far as to say that this book should be made mandatory reading for college students who study the Middle East.)

I realize that not everyone has the time to read a 570 page book. I read a few pages a day in several places in India, and in trains and it took me a long time to finish the book. If you are really pressed for time, you should still consider borrowing the book from your library and read just the chapter titled ‘Faultline.’

In this very skillfully written chapter, Friedman has us angry at the Palestinians for the ways in which they make Israelis' lives uncomfortable, and a couple of pages later, we are fuming about the way the Israelis treat the Palestinians. Throughout the chapter, Friedman does this over and over, and we are disabused of our ideas that any simple solution would work and we realize how complex and layered the problem is.

For those who want to learn about the region, I highly recommend this book.

Travel Book: A House Somewhere

One afternoon this past December, with time to kill in the town of Alice Springs in the heart of Australian outback, I entered a used bookstore. This book, with contributions from a number of travel-writing stars caught my eye. But I already had plenty to read and I managed to resist the temptation to buy it.

Back home in Chicago I got hold of the book and read the pieces at a slow pace, enjoying them one at a time. I finally finished the book yesterday.

The idea behind this travel anthology is a great one: We all dream of owning or renting a house in some exotic place. Travel writers who have actually done it, write about their experience of their ‘house somewhere.’ With writers like Theroux, Jan Morris, Simon Winchester, and Karl Taro Greenfeld included, you can’t go wrong.

A couple of related asides: 1. Compilations such as this often help me find interesting writers I’d otherwise have missed. If I enjoyed their article, I will try to get hold of their book. 2. Any compilation by Don George of Salon.com is well worth reading.

There simply isn’t enough time for us to live in all these places. Our only choice is to experience things vicariously, through the eyes of these observant writers. You should consider checking out this book, even if you think you only have time to read a few of the stories.

Listening to Patricia Schultz - 1000 Places to See Before You Die

It turned out that I was very unfairly biased against Patricia Schultz, the author of ‘1000 Places to See Before You Die.’ There are a number of variations of these books on sale, and I’d assumed that these were hack jobs. After all, with the help of the internet, it won’t take long to put together a list.

Patricia Schultz was the top featured keynote speaker for Sunday at the Chicago Adventure Travel expo. I had low expectations going in. However, within 5 minutes of listening I realized that I had grossly underestimated her efforts and her ability to connect with the listeners. Patricia is no hack.

For an entire hour, she had the audience of around 200 listening to her spellbound (100+ were standing). She had the unenviable task of picking 25 places from her list of 1000. (Here are a few places that she chose that might not be that obvious: Burma, Berlin, Prague, the Masai Mara herd migration, the Namib Desert, Monument Valley, Belize, Petra and Patagonia.)

She had picked one photo per place and had a small quotation to go along with it. For every place on her slide, she had stories about the country, about her trip. And from her digressions it was clear that she would happily talk about all 1000 places, if only there was time.

So what was it about her presentation that made it likable? First, it was the overall grace with which she conveyed her passion for travel. She didn’t come across as a know-it-all and was grateful for the travel opportunities that have come her way.

Ultimately, I think she resonated because she tapped into the universal longing (at least in that audience) for more travel to more exotic places.

I almost bought the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

The Lufthansa flight out of Athens to Frankfurt was departing before 6am, which meant that we were there at an ungodly hour on the Monday after our vacation. We were taking the flight to Frankfurt so that we could connect to the early flight out to Chicago and be there that same Monday. (That way, I saved one vacation day.)

Being overly optimistic, I thought that I would read my book on that pre-dawn Lufthansa flight. As soon as I boarded and sat down, I removed the book ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari’ from my carry-on, shoved it into the seat pocket and promptly fell asleep.

I had picked up the book from my local library without knowing anything about it. It had a catchy title and the author’s last name was Indian which piqued my interest. (I recommend a lot of books here, but this is not one of them. I could never quite connect with the book, so I only read a few pages.)

After getting off the plane at Frankfurt and while walking towards my connecting flight to Chicago, I remembered that the book was still in the seat pocket. I rushed back to the gate but they wouldn’t let me get back onboard. Instead, I was directed to Lufthansa’s Lost and Found office. I gave the person there at the office the book’s details and my contact details and boarded my onward flight to Chicago, without the book.

Three days later, from Chicago I called up Lufthansa, but they said it would take time. So I waited to hear about how I could retrieve the book. Meanwhile I renewed the book to buy some more time. After around 3 weeks, a letter from Lufthansa showed up saying sorry, and that they hadn’t been able to locate the book.

So I went to my library to pay for the book. (The book was available for under $10 from several discount booksellers on the Web, but the lady at the circulation desk said that there was a “processing fee” as well, so I would have to pay somewhere around $25.) Before I could hand her the money, she noticed that the book could be renewed one more time.

I didn’t want to renew it, but she insisted. “You never know. You might find it somewhere in your home or in your car,” she said.

A few days later, when I was checking my online account, going through the books I had checked out from the library I noticed that The Monk book was not in the list. Perplexed, I drove to the library and checked the shelf. The book was sitting there. And from the markings, I knew that it was the exact same copy that I had left in the aircraft seat pocket, back in Frankfurt.

I never found out how it made its way across the Atlantic and back to my local library.

The Snow Leopard

There is a very telling anecdote in page 158 of Peter Matthiessen’s book The Snow Leopard. The author and a group of Sherpas and porters are wading through a stream on their trek to Crystal Mountain in the Tibetan Plateau. They are tossing packs over the stream to get them across and one Sherpa, Dawa, drops a pack into the stream. That pack contains the head Sherpa Jang-bu’s bedding. Jang-bu sees this and spontaneously bursts out laughing even though it means great inconvenience for him. The others join in the laughter. Peter mentions this as but one example of the trust and acceptance of life of these Sherpas.

Because I know how upset I would become if I had to spend a night in such a cold place in a soggy sleeping bag, this anecdote resonated with me. It was a reminder of how much growing up I still had to do.

In my recent trip to Malaysia and Singapore, I finished reading this travel classic, which I had been meaning to get to for years.

The Snow Leopard justifiably occupies its position in numerous all-time Top Travel books lists. Peter Matthiessen traveled in the Dolpo region in the Himalayas for 2 months back in 1973, and this book is his record of that journey. He writes authoritatively about many topics: his trip but also about his practice of Buddhism, about monasteries and lamas, about the Sherpas and the porters, about the people they meet who spend all their lives above 16,000 feet, about botany, so knowledgeably about the birds they get to observe and about the blue sheep, wolves and snow leopards.

His prose is sparse and in many instances it sparkles. It often reminded me of James Salter’s writing. For those who take the time, the reading of The Snow Leopard itself will be a great reward.

Below are three paragraphs that I copied down from the book so that I would remember Peter’s ideas when I reread these excerpts.

This is the paragraph that made a deep impression on me.
[On Trusting life]
Yet I feel calm, and ready to accept whatever comes, and therefore happy. The turn in my mood occurred this morning, when the brave Dawa, attempting to catch Jang-bu’s (the head sherpa’s) pack, hurled across a stream, dropped it ineptly into the water. Wonderfully, Jang-bu laughed aloud, as did Dawa and Phu-Tsering, although it meant wet clothes and a wet sleeping bag for the head Sherpa. That happy-go-lucky spirit, that acceptance which is not fatalism but a deep trust in life, made me ashamed.


[On the betrayal in fulfillment]
[…]Perhaps the life fear comes when all the mysteries are laid open, when what we thought we wanted is attained. It is just at the moment of seeming fulfillment that we sense irrevocable betrayal, like a great wave rising silently behind us, and know most poignantly what Milarepa meant: All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow: acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings, in destruction; meetings in separation; births, in death…” Confronted by the uncouth specter of old age, disease, and death, we are thrown back upon the present, on this moment, here, right now, for that is all there is.

[On Miracles]
One of the four cardinal sins in the monastic order of the Buddha -- after unchastity, theft, and killing – was laying claim to miraculous powers. It is related that Sakyamuni once dismissed as of small consequence a feat of levitation on the part of a disciple, and cried out in pity for a yogin by the river who had wasted twenty years of his human existence in learning how to walk on water, when the ferryman might have taken him across for a small coin.

Apples Are From Kazakhstan

I can tell you exactly where and when I got the desire to go visit Kazakhstan. It was the book.

I am always curious about why people choose one destination over all the others available to them. Why Korea but not Taiwan? Why this National Park over that other one? The responses, if I get to hear them, are invariably illuminating.

In my case, I have been long fascinated by the Central Asian republics -- because of the Silk Road and because to me they are exotic. But I didn’t know much about any of them. The only popular mention of Kazakhstan is in Sacha Cohen’s movie Borat, which does the country grave injustice.

A few months ago, I learned that a very good new book about Kazakhstan had come out. Apples are from Kazakhstan, by Christopher Robbins. Soon, in my local library, I saw the book on display, ready to be checked out. The declarative title is a very memorable one. (A stranger who is the author’s airplane seatmate tells him, “Apples are from Kazakhstan”, and that statement sets off a two year love affair with the country for Robbins which results in this book.)

The book’s delectable cover is a great example of the creative use of digital photo manipulation (Photoshop, perhaps).

At the time, I was getting ready to travel in Ukraine and Moldova, both of which are sister ex-soviet republics just like Kazakhstan and so I brought the book home to read it during that trip.

AAFK is everything a travel book should be. It is about the author’s visits there, but also has history, politics and is full of anecdotes that give us a sense of the country. The author gets access to the President and so we get to read about aspects of Nazarbayev that we otherwise never would. Robbins’ is effusive in his praise of the president, who comes across as a very intelligent person.

Every country should be so lucky as to have a book like AAFK written about it. Do read the book if you get a chance. It is the next best thing to actually visiting Kazakhstan.

Ghost Train To The Eastern Star

Today, I completed reading Paul Theroux’s Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. Last month, when I blogged about his classic book The Great Railway Bazaar I hadn’t known that he had a new book just published, which retraced his earlier journey of 33 years ago.

In Ghost Train, Paul travels by rail (mostly) from London all the way to Japan and back, over 28,000 miles in all, and writes about his trip.

If you listen to Theroux’s critics, they are quick to use words like caustic or acerbic or grouchy to describe his prose. But I find that such one-word descriptions are too reductive for someone with his abilities. Yes, at times he is all of those, but he is also extremely funny and compassionate and a great observer and summarizer of things and places.

I have always maintained that reading a book by James Michener (Alaska, Hawaii) is the equivalent of getting to spend 3 months there. Paul Theroux’s travel books have that same quality – you can ‘travel’ right in your living room with his books.

If you haven’t read anything by Paul Theroux, you have at least three good choices. The Great Railway Bazaar, Dark Star Safari (Africa) and his newly released Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (retracing his earlier GRB journey).

Start with the Ghost Train if you can. If the whole book seems too daunting given your other time constraints, get hold of the book anyway and read the chapters for just the countries that interest you. I can especially recommend Turkey (the intelligentsia he meets and Orhan Pamuk), India (his take on the recent IT boom and the widening economic gap), Burma (how things haven’t changed much in 30 years) and Japan (he writes about the manga craze and his discussions with two well-known authors – Haruki Murakami and Pico Iyer).

Just don’t let the critics rob you of the unique pleasure of reading his lucid prose.

Lijiang - through Simon Winchester's eyes

We were in the delightful town of Lijiang recently, and only when I was there did I recall that a writer I admire, Simon Winchester, had passed through the town a decade or so ago and had written about it in his book, The River At The Center Of the World. Once I returned to Chicago, I went back to the library to see what he'd written. Here's what I found:

The town of Lijiang is one of western China's true gems — one of the very few way stations in the Middle Kingdom on what, archaically perhaps, still known as the Hippie Trail. Youngsters from around the world come to Lijiang, en route between the equally delightful towns of Dali and Xishuangbanna in Yunnan and Yang- shuo in Guangxi province. They are on a circuit — the same people who visit the back streets of Chiang Mai, Kathmandu and Lhasa, or Panajachel, Goa and Trivandrum, end up with equal enthusiasm and curiosity and camaraderie in towns like Lijiang. No matter what regime is in power, nor what rules are in force, there is a universality in the appeal of such places — laid-back, easygoing, with colorful people and cheap and wholesome food. In the normal and depressing order of business, the youngsters come to such a place first as rucksack-carrying pioneers and discoverers; the tour buses come next; and then the airports and the big hotels.

Lijiang is currently poised delicately between the first two phases of this evolution — the youngsters are still making it here, but on buses as well as by hitchhiking (1 picked up two young Israelis, taking six months off from their kibbutz, and they were typical of the breed); and the hotel lobbies have notices offering the day’s program to the tour groups of Dutch and Belgians who have found out about the local delights. No groups of Americans or Japanese, nor of Chinese "compatriots" from Taiwan and Hong Kong, not yet; no airport yet, either, though one was due to open, imminently); and no Holiday Inns or other chains, although I met an unpleasant Frenchwoman who had plans for a Sofitel, once the airfield opened. The developers are eyeing Lijiang, greedily and warily at the same time.

Of course, that was 12 years ago. Yes, the airport is there now. There is KFC, right outside the old town, and judging by the crowds, it is very popular with the Chinese teenagers. Lijiang's Old Town had the feel of completeness to it (which we didn't find in Dali.) So it looks like the developers that Simon bemoans have come, done their work and left.

Where does Wanderlust originate from?

While this book can't be said to be where my wanderlust originated, it surely fed to it. I was rambling around for years before I read Paul Theroux's 'The Great Railway Bazaar.' But the book definitely changed the way the I look at maps. When I see two places, I first wonder if it is possible to go from one to the other by road, traveling closer to the land.

It made me enjoy traveling by land (trains and buses) a lot more than simply flying in and flying out of a city. A lot of our trips are open-jaws (start in one city, end the trip at another and fly back) and this too was partly the result of reading TGRB.

In this book about his enviably long railway odyssey, Theroux starts out in London, and keeps going all across Europe and Asia, ending up in Japan. And then, he turns around and does the whole trip back to London, via a different route (Trans-Siberian). His astute observations and unpretentious style of writing make this, perhaps, my favorite travel book of all time. (Though I know that Peter Matthiessen's Snow Leopard is firmly perched as the number one travel book among scores of people.)

I own this book, but I actually listened to it as an audio-book the first time. Frank Muller (the narrator) doesn't merely read the lines, he performs them. I remember that for 2 weeks or so, I used to eagerly look forward to my commute to and from work which is when I listened to it.

If you love travel and haven't read this book, I highly recommend it.