Inside A Bookworm’s El Dorado

On March 14<SUP>th</SUP> I saw this fantastic ad in the Gulf News. Magrudy’s were opening their largest bookshop in the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1lace>Middle East</st1lace> on the 15<SUP>th</SUP> and all bibliophiles, bookworms, bibliomaniacs and bluestockings were invited… They were giving away free vouchers, freebies and T Shirts… and there were chances of one winning 6 months and 1 year supply of books… It would pay to be an early bird even if you were a bookworm…( huh?) What an oxymoron…eh?

Even as the news sunk in, adrenalin started coursing through my veins and my grey cells became a beehive of activity planning the strategy for being there… The whole day, I hugged the little secret to myself…not wanting to share my dream with anyone least of all the breadwinner of the family who is getting rather annoyed by my flamboyantly extravagant book shopping! But since this is the silver jubilee of our wedding, I could always emotionally pin him down saying this was my ideal treat ( self indulgence, rather!) … Anyway, I planned to tell him after I reached DFC that I was there and could he please give me a ride home after office hours…

15<SUP>th</SUP> morning dawned bright and sunny…..just like my spirits. I was grinning like the Cheshire cat till the men-folk started raising their eyebrows… A concerned spouse was at the verge of asking me if was sick or something… I waltzed ( okay…okay… a hyperbole… I can’t waltz… read it as ‘waddled’) around doing the chores. I even finished preparing the dinner… had an early lunch and kept my ensemble for the evening ready… Who knows, they may decide to interview me… God knows all the bookshops in <st1:City><st1lace>Dubai</st1lace></st1:City> by now know that I am the crazy lady who blows all her money over books…

Around <st1:time Hour="15" Minute="15">3.15 pm</st1:time> I left a la Cinderella… The fact that a taxi slid to a stop right near me, the moment I was at the roadside, was a good omen for me. Normally empty cabs driven by disdainful cabbies cruise past my frantic antics at thumbing them down. The cabbie turned out to be a very friendly talkative chap, which I read as another good omen… If Dame Luck kept smiling indulgently like this, I would be ‘the patron royale’ to enter the portals of the biggest bookshop in the <st1lace>Middle East</st1lace> and be showered with gifts galore!

Hah! A fool and her dreams are soon parted. When I reached DFC it was not yet <st1:time Hour="16" Minute="0">4 pm</st1:time>… and I rushed to the venue… to … to… to… see that there were a hundred other smart alecks already in the queue. What was wrong with people… they didn’t look like they were there for the love of books… they were definitely out to get freebies… How could they do this to me…Aarrghhh!

One consolation was that within half an hour there were another hundred… this time behind me! That was some consolation! Soon came the pestilential queue-jumpers… families and bevies of belles who had the audacity to merge into the line ahead of me while the security guys smiled impotently! This happened till the gentleman in front of me raised Cain about it and the Magrudy higher ups were forced to do something about it!

Soon the freebies came… and then the free vouchers. I got vouchers for hundred Dirhams… my first ever gift from a bookshop and I was like a kid who had hit pay-dirt in candy land! And the man standing next to me had to burst my bubble of euphoria that those at the head of the queue would have got vouchers for 5 hundred to 1K Dirhams… that brought a little bile into the mouth… which I gulped down philosophically after glancing at the serpentine queue behind me…

Around 5, when they were scheduled to open, a troupe of Arab dancers started performing the traditional dance… a nice diversion… but not for the impatient like me! By now I had made a couple of calls to the spouse, first delivering the bolt from the blue that ‘I was out book shopping and would he please pick me up later in the evening’ and then another ‘ don’t hurry…it may take more time than I had anticipated… Obviously, the spouse planned to be there to control my extravagance and promised to meet me there and told me to take as much time as I wanted… only, he turned up in an hour… and an overly anxious husband hovering behind me is hardly what I can tolerate in bookshops… and this cramped my shopping spree somewhat!

Anyway, I was inside the Magrudy’s at a quarter to six… It was huge… but I felt a little cheated… Not as many books as I had expected… What did I expect? A vault at the Gringots overflowing with books…? Still… any place with books in them is my favourite hangout… so went around peering, peeping, scanning, perusing and feeling the books… smelling the books… And soon, my shopping bag started weighing heavier and heavier…

It was when I was in the Humour Section that someone tapped on my shoulder making me jump out of my skin… turned out to be an ashen husband ( he obviously had had a peek into my basket) I told him I had got free vouchers for books… his complexion altered slightly… It was 6. 40…. But the Cinderella in me realized that the appearance of the spouse is like the clanging of twelve O clock and I had better hurry…

As we stood in yet another queue, this time to redeem the vouchers and pay through the nose for the rest of the books, they were calling out the numbers of the lucky blighters who won the 6 months of free books and one year of the same… and I wasn’t even in the vicinity…

Books have become expensive… my bill totaled to an appalling 346 where as Magrudy’s had given me only vouchers for 1C. So I had to shell out 246… I did though, with a slight twinge…( the presence of the spouse breathing heavy right behind me in bookshops have that effect on me!) .. but I just ignored it.

I had had my treat. The Collected Stories of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Arichie, Desert Flower by Warris Dirie, The Kite Runner, two mainstream thrillers: The Innocent Man by Grisham and The Fifth Vial by Michael Palmer…as I am an ardent fan of both… Then a book on mnemonics titled ‘i before e ( except after c) by Judy Parkinson and another one called Classroom Clangers… As I walked out clutching the bags of books, I told myself sternly… no more books till you finish all these… Yes… yes…. I promised myself I won’t buy another book till I read all these…

A bookworm and her promises are soon parted. Two days later I wander about in Borders in Mall of the Emirates while husband is inside SKI <st1:City><st1lace>Dubai</st1lace></st1:City> giving a treat to my sister and her son, when I chance upon ‘ Living With Mother’ by Michele Hanson … the synopsis is too hilarious for me to leave it behind… and I buy it!

As they say, ‘ leopards cannot change their spots’ and but then again they also say ‘if you can’t beat ‘em…join ‘em!’ Sigh! May be I need serious counseling … or…need to register with ‘Bookaholics Anonymous’ or… a complete blood transfusion… I am sure my spouse will oblige…