I have an interesting story connected to books and their initial lack of availability in India. So, I was an NRI for just over a decade back in the early 2000s, all the way till 2011. Though my company operated in Australia, China, UK, USA, and UAE (besides India), I chose Dubai as my base for several reasons, one of which was its proximity to Pune (later in the 2000s, Air India Express would operate a direct flight) which was literally 6 hours away, door to door, with more time taken to reach DXB airport from my home than any other travel in the air or ground thereafter! The point is that I had a home at both ends and needed nothing but my laptop to travel, leaving a massive 30kg of luggage allowance go abegging which was a shame because I travelled to Pune every 3 weeks, stayed for a week and then travelled back.
Anyway, enough preamble: I got hooked to Amazon and saw all these amazing books on it which somehow I could not get delivered to India. So, I started ordering them to my Dubai address and then carrying them as check-in baggage to Pune. I even bought 2 sturdy hardtop Delseys to transport them. I became so addicted that I had both Delseys full on every trip.
That created an amusing situation at the Indian customs in Pune, where this was (I assume) the only international flight to land and take off from. I always carried the invoices with me and always insisted I declare them, and I was always waved through (in terms of duty, not questioning, as will become evident below) since they were within the allowance, or whatever.
The first couple of times, I was questioned lightly about them, but I remember that for the next few times, the bags were systematically emptied, every book opened and checked, and I was almost interrogated for the source of the books and at least on one instance asked point-blank if I was carrying contraband and hiding it in the bags or the books! It was hilarious.
The officer-in-charge (a Goan, I still remember, but will not name him) was convinced I was smuggling SOMETHING, but he was just not able to fix it. He even came visiting my office in Pune ‘just to say Hello since I was in the area’ and tried his best to get ‘the truth’ out of me, but I kept telling him that there was nothing to confess and I really love books and this was how I ‘flaunted my wealth’ if you would call it that.
Eventually, his paranoia got so high that we got into a heated argument about something else I had bought and declared and paid duty on, and it got to a point where I had to escalate the issue and he was transferred, just as my Dubai-Pune-Dubai flights became less and less frequent, Amazon started delivering to India, and Pune started having more international flights.
Interestingly, I bought Salman Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses’ from the secular EU delivered to the Islamic UAE and carted it to confused India by hand because the Indian authorities had banned it in India. What an irony!
Later edit: Forgot to add a detail since it was really so long ago. I remember the officer-in-question keeping a list of my book titles to catch me in case it was books I was smuggling to sell in India, but never found a duplicate title. He then added authors. Still no joy. So, he started writing their approximate weights and features (something like: ‘hardcover, about 400g, brown cover, with a picture of some Mughal emperor’). He even made a show of it, because he thought he’d scare me into confessing to whatever it was that I was smuggling. I mean, the more I think about this, the more surreal the whole thing seems. I wonder if he is still out there, trying to buttonhole unsuspecting passers-by to tell them a wild conspiracy theory about the books this chap was bringing in from Dubai.
Note: Image symbolic, and nostalgic, for this is how my bookshelf used to look several years ago, before we had a baby who needed the space! And yes, it is 3 layers deep. Sigh!
