Potlucks, Pedals and Parker (Chapter 2 of 3)

This post is in direct continuation from my previous post Potlucks, Pedals and Parker (Chapter 1 of 3). Please read that before continuing with this one.

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Perhaps the afternoon time frame was the reason I found very little traffic. With each pedal, I was covering ground. When I saw that I have to go straight for a while, I enabled pedal assist mode and everything became as smooth as butter. 

After a while, I reached Chaturshringi road. Not only the road was pretty empty, it also curved at times. By this time, I had completely switched to complete electric mode. As the road made a gradual turn, the smooth ride coupled with a soft wind ruffled my hairs back and automatically "𝆕𝆕 Dhoom Machale 𝆕𝆕" played in my head.

The first stop was Book World. FC Road was very crowded. Mostly student crowd. Once my bike was secured in the parking of the building, I descended the steps to the basement and into the shop. I purchased Agatha Christie's "Curtain" for my sister. I asked the shopkeeper about mangas and comics so he took me to that section.

There was Death Note, Chainsawman, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen all in front of me. I was more interested in Record of Ragnarok but that was not there. As I was about to go out, the shopkeeper showed me something that made my jaw drop.

 

In his hands was the hardcover version of The Amazing Spider-Man book from Penguins classics' Marvel collection. As I took it in my hand, the weight, the golden gilded pages, the smooth texture, and the phenomenal print quality was enough to prove that it was an original and not a bootlegged copy. His asking price was Rs.1200. After a quick search on Amazon, I came to know that a new one costs more than Rs.2400. He told me that this is a used one, but the condition was very good. No science of wear and tear, no scratches were there.

I had made my mind. "I must have it". I thought to myself. When the shopkeeper saw that I was ready to buy it, he made a desperate attempt to push a copy of a DC comic also, but I was not falling for that. Just the two books were there in my bag as I ascended the steps back up, and it was time for some mouth watering Chinese food.

 

It was a small shop but was very crowded. That was a good sign. Luckily there was space to sit and go through its extensive menu. One of the best things were they offered the option of half plate and full plate. This is something that is not seen a lot these days. I don't know why though. It gives an option to try multiple dishes and avoid wastage.
I ordered half a plate of Schezwan noodles and after finishing that, I was planning to order something else.
 

It was spicy, but thankfully I don't have a low spice threshold, so I enjoyed all of it. Also, the quantity was just enough to fill me up. Not more, not less. When I was done, I didn't feel like ordering anything else. In my mind, the shop was marked as favorites and a few minutes later, I was parking my bicycle in front of the Gadgets shop.

While one cannot plan every single aspect of his/her life, any kind of planned activity gives me immense satisfaction and peace of mind. The fact that I had planned for this small visit and all the shops were pretty close to each other gave me a nice feeling of "getting things done" and I was not just aimlessly wandering.

Also, a good thing about having a bicycle is that it does not take a lot of space and it fits in small places especially if there is no dedicated parking space.

 

After climbing 4 metal steps I entered the shop. There were multiple things of interest like game controllers, headphones, and other general stuff related to computers and gaming. There were a couple of mechanical keyboards, but all of them were of the 60% layout or the TKS layout.

I am the kind of old-fashioned nerd who likes my keyboard thicc and of the full-sized layout, so I did not spend much of my time on those.

For a moment or two, I seriously considered buying a game controller but dropped that idea as I don't play games that often. It was a good decision because even now almost two years later, I haven't played games with a controller. Keyboard gets the job done for Tomb Raider and Overcooked 2.

 

One good thing about the shop was it had original physical copies of certain games. In these times of having a game library in the cloud (Steam), it's nice to see the old ways are still around.

I have very strong opinions about subscriptions/renting stuff online (not owning), but I'll shed more light on them in a different post. After feasting my eyes on all these things for 20 minutes, I got out of the shop without buying anything.

 

Next stop was Venus stationery. It was just 40 meters away from Gadgets so I went there on foot. I had been to such stationery stores before and was not new to it.

 

I casually browsed the entire store and admired their collection. There were multiple kids going crazy over certain items and nagging their parents to buy them stuff. I remembered my childhood days but I was not exactly like them. I used to sneakily add stuff to our shopping cart and the item was virtually invisible among so many other things and the long bill. It was discovered back at home and nothing can be done once it was there.
I ended up buying a permanent marker as I remembered the one I have at home was drying out.

 

I went back to my bicycle and set the location of my house. As I was peddling, I was thinking to myself:
"I went pretty far from home and also got a nice Spider man book. I should do this more often. I WILL do this more often. This was a successful journey!"

Little did I realize, the Baner-Pashan road in the journey would lead to unforeseen and dangerous circumstances.

To be continued.....