Browsing At Manneys

One of the pleasures of visiting Pune is the chance to drop by at Manneys Booksellers (despite the missing apostrophe).

There's a strong and wonderful aroma of books that greets one at the entrance, and though one is by no means a regular, one imagines that little has changed in the more than half century that the bookshop has been in business.

It's gratifying to see just how well-represented almost every section is: from fiction to film; from children's books to computers; from design to philosophy. Though the shop is spacious, on two levels, the tall, cramped shelves and long wooden tables almost beg you to stay for longer than the time you'd allotted.

One toyed with a dust-stained copy of Bernard Malamud's The People And Uncollected Stories before putting it down and deciding to feed one's inferiority complex by purchasing The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory as well as The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide. Oh, and also the promising-looking Fearless Nadia: The True Story of Bollywood's Original Stunt Queen by Dorothee Wenner.

Then, it was time to sample another of Pune's pleasures: Shrewsbury biscuits from Kyani's. Mens sana, though not quite corpore sano.