Voluntary work

I convinced AFJ to have her lunch at the brand new Saravanabhavan that had opened up in Mylapore. The place is pricey as we found out. However the hotel 's reputation for serving excellent food preceeds its price. Meals are prepared under highly sanitised conditions. So you can be assured that you will live to see the next day!

From there, we proceeded to Aries Book Store. The second floor of the book shop has an excellent collection, although they are hapazardly arranged. It makes it very difficult to get through those long rows of books, unless ofcourse you have an eye for books like the talented AFJ. On the spur of the moment, we decided that we could drop by over the weekend and catalogue the books. First by genre and then alphabetically. 


In the meanwhile we had picked up some books which we decided to reserve under our names. I picked up Don Delilio's, 'Body Artist'. Apparently, Delilio also happens to be Haruki Murakami's inspiration (Courtesy: AFJ). I had previously reserved John Travolta's, 'Propellor One-way Night Coach'. The book is still lying there. Penniless, I have been stashing away books to be purchased during the first week of the following month.

We decided to pursue this idea of volunteering our services and made our way to the main floor of the shop. Luckily for us, the book shop owner was available and I broached the subject of 'cataloguing' the books at our own cost. His response surprised me as much as my idea surprised him. I am sure he thought that the two of us were whackos. I thought he looked quite grumpy and decided that he would not even acknowledge our presence. However, the idea of 'voluntary services' appealed to his business sense and as an incentive offered us the, 'take books now, pay later' scheme. Additionally, he also offered to give us good discounts on our book purchases.

AFJ and I thought we struck a smart deal. It was our chance to pick and choose books that we liked and leave the rest to the other gullible book lovers.

With wicked grins plastered on our faces, we rushed back to work and also managed to recruit another book lover for the weekend service!