I cannot remember the number of times we have been to Moore market in Madras in the 1960s and 70s. While going to Ernakulam from Durgapur and back on LTC, we had to halt at Madras for a few hours. The Howrah-Madras Mail used to arrive early morning at Madras Central. The train to Kerala would depart only in the evening. So the intermediate hours were spent in a lodge near the station. After bath and breakfast, hubby, daughter and I used to go to the nearby Moore market.

Moore market was like a rambling department store. There were shops selling all kinds of things. After going round the building doing window-shopping, we would halt at our favourite shops - the bookshops selling second-hand books. Being booklovers, all of us found some book or other suited to our different tastes. Hubby was interested in the art books, as he used to do water colour and oil paintings. My daughter would browse through Enid Blyton books and buy a few of them. I liked to flip through old magazines and light romance novels and would end up buying some of them too.

The attraction was induced largely by my late father's tales about his forays into Moore market. He had a huge collection of books on a variety of subjects, many of them bought at the second-hand bookshops there. Whenever he was in Madras on official work, he never missed going there. On many a book, we found written in his impeccable handwriting, "Bought for 4 annas" or "Bought for 6 annas."

After 1985, we moved to Coimbatore and so could make no more trips to Moore market. Later we heard that the venerable old market was demolished after the outbreak of a fire there and that a new market was built elsewhere. We cannot ever forget the old market; it held lots of happy memories for us. Markets may come, markets may go - but there will never be another Moore market.