Art Book Center

Sept 19
I decided to go to the Art Book Center today; Caryn had told me about this shop that had some good architecture books, and there was a really unique one on Chandigarh I wanted to get. She told me it was easy to find, just before you get to the big intersection before Ellis bridge, near a Jain temple. Well, the auto driver didn’t take the road that we’ve always taken to Ellis bridge, so no one knew where this place was when we asked around. I finally just got out, asked where the bridge was, and started walking in that direction. After walking around back and forth down the street I finally found it. It was set a ways back from the street, so no wonder I couldn’t find it, but it was, as Caryn had said, very colorful! It was in an older structure and area that was more like the old city.

It was this tiny, old shop whose walls were completely packed with books. Even in this small space, there were three guys working in there, and it wasn’t really the type of shop you could browse in. They asked what I was interested in and found books related to that. After a few minutes they asked me to move to another seat because a big group was coming in. Well, it turned out to be this group of 10 or so women from California who were interested in textiles and touring India to look at the textiles here. Which would have been no problem, however, the three guys dropped everything to help all these women, and then when I asked for something they were like, you’re not in a hurry are you? You can wait, right? Which pissed me off because I was there first! And short-sighted of them, they had no idea – I’m gonna be here for nine months, these ladies won’t be coming back! Whatever, I told you I was in a bad mood! However I did end up finding a really great book on Chadigarh. I guess apparently it’s pretty rare, too; the men said that people come in all the time and buy 8 copies for friends. I was lucky, they had only one left. It’s great though because it has essays written by some of the original people who worked with Corbusier on the plan.

Oh and there's this big holiday called Navratri - 'Nine nights" It's especially big in Gujarat, they say people here really love to dance. So they start dancing at 10pm and it goes until 2 am or later. There are a couple particular dances they do, one with these sticks called Dandiya and the other called Garba, but they dress up in these traditional outfits and dance in a circle.