Strange little bookmark

This post is not about internet bookmarks at all, I dont use them. While they have their place, I find traditional bookmarks much more intriguing. I know that Shamashis has not found this blog yet, so I'm safe from "How dare you damage the spine of a beautifuly crafted book by inserting a bookmark?" I assure my bibliophilic readers that I do not use them too. I just memorize the page number. Now, with all those clarifications out of the way, let us proceed to the real matter of this post.

Let me start by quoting a few lines from Chandrabindoo.

Anondo Sen boi porten, Shomoy ta 1972,
Browning, Tennyson, Arthur Miller,
Romance, bhromon, crime-thriller!

Devaluatione taka jeno bekar,
Anondo Sen pore shudhu newspaper!

Now, here's the reason. As most readers of my blog might know, I have been reading The Plague, by Albert Camus. I bought this book from College Street. It happens to be a 1965 reprint of the 1948 translation by Stuart Gilbert.

I found a strange little bookmark in it. A bus ticket for 30 paisa! For the uninitiated, if you had been in India a few years ago, you could pay it as 30p = 20p + 10p. But, both coins are now being phased out. Tomorrow, 10 times that amount, Rs 3.00 might get me a ride, from Jadavpur to Santoshpur, on a strange three-wheeled vehicle called the Auto Rickshaw!

Note: You have to share the infamous "Auto" with four other passengers, excluding yourself and the driver. I have encountered only two accidents in my life while travelling this way. Going by the number of daily accidents, two is a very small number!