Delhiwale: A steal at Daryaganj book bazaar

At Nitin Jain’s stall, we find a rare old family heirloom. It is worth three times its price, but we bag it for a bargain

Sunday wouldn’t be Sunday if we weren’t out and about, poking around the weekly bazaar stalls in Daryaganj near Old Delhi.

Nitin Jain deals in more than old books at his stall outside Golcha Cinema. (Mayank Austen Soofi / HT Photo)

Most of them specialise in second-hand books, with some notable exceptions. There’s one man selling old postcards outside (now closed) Golcha Cinema, while another hawks empty wine bottles in front of the post office.

But our freely confessed passion consists mainly of the printed word.

Recently, we stumbled upon a fascinating new stall, where proprietor Nitin Jain deals in more than old books.

Astonishingly, he’s got an entire year’s issues of the long-extinct Urdu film magazine Blitz, a Playboy calendar from 1978, and some framed paintings that once adorned old bungalows.

Mr Jain says he scours the country for this and that, and while chatting, we spot an old photo album.

It is clearly a precious heirloom: black and white prints of a family that lived in cities as different as Cambridge and Ahmedabad.

We just have to get it. Mr Jain asks for Rs 3,000 but we finally agree on Rs 2,800. (It would have been a steal even at Rs 10,000.)

We’ll forage his stall tomorrow as well.