A few minutes back I realized that I own one of the world's oldest original hardbound editions of the cult novel 'The Godfather'. It is 40 years old (come January) and belongs to the first edition printed in Great Britain, way back in 1969 by Bookprint Limited, Crawley, Sussex.
I had picked it up at Flora Fountain, Mumbai, 39 years later.
It has been gifted to one Mr. Munnu, by a person whose signature somewhat seems to correspond to the name Prempralime on February 1st 1970.
It has been gifted to one Mr. Munnu, by a person whose signature somewhat seems to correspond to the name Prempralime on February 1st 1970.
Text on the inside page
"
Bombay
My dear Munnu!
Hearty Congratulations, you are going to Nagpur to join your office. I am giving you this gift, my best wishes go with you. Keep up the good work.
The best of luck to you.
Affectionately yours
Prempralime
1.2.70"
So, if you happen to know this Munnu who went to Nagpur to join office or, still better, Munnu yourself (in which case you might be atleast 65 years old now), please get in touch with me. If the book really matters and means a lot to you I am willing to give it back.
I really don't know if all this makes any sense or if anyone really cares at all. Just doing my part.
Bloggers and twitters, your help solicited in spreading the word. Thanks.
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11 comments:
wow! this sounds so much like they show in the movies and all... sweet of you to do this... hope you do meet up with munnu and it turns out to be great :)
What a wonderful gift, perfect with the handwritten message!
Hope Munnu gets in touch with you, and if he does I'll be so so happy for Munnu AND Hari.. :)
M
^Priya
Hmmm... For that to happen, this message has to spread like wildfire, raging thro' the blogosphere. Even then chances are one in a million. Right now there has been hardly a spark :)
^Mano
Yeah, gifts with hand written messages are lovely. I too treasure a select few :)
pl link pics to a bigger pic of the handwritten note. Prempralime or whatever could trigger something
^Babu
Done Boss! Actually I had tried to host a bigger picture, but had trouble getting it uploaded. Luckily it worked now.
Thanks for the suggestion. Hope it helps! :)
I don't think the presenter's name is Prempralime. It seems to be "Prem Prat_i__." I'm not sure about the characters after 'prat' except 'i', but I guess they should be among a, e, o, u, r, v, n, m, c. If anyone has the time and knowledge of indian second names they can try the 810 or so permutations and find the name. Approaching some graphologists may also help.
My guess is, both Munnu and Prem worked in the same office somewhere apart from Nagpur and Munnu got transferred to Nagpur branch or blah blah blah.
Though I could only guess about names, I'm sure about one thing - the chance of finding any of the persons through internet is very nearly zero.
Nice analysis there! That little research on names with permutations and all reminds me of the movie 'Anniyan'! :) Yeah, I know about the limitations of finding the person, but as I said, it was just a try!
Thanks for posting bigger pic. I am a sucker for lost & found stories, so here is my two bits worth...
the last 5 letters are LINIS, there are 2 dots, the S matches the S in 'Congratulations'. That makes it Pralinis.
The first name is def not Indian...
If not Prem, how about Frem...which makes it Frem Pralinis.
A fast check shows the names are German/Dutch...over to you Hari.
Babu, let us not get over enthusiastic about this. When even a kid can tell the first letter is P, why should we bother considering it as F and going global?
If you consider the slight stroke preceding what you consider as l as dot, I think you are wrong again. If you carefully go through the writer's style, you can find all dots are clearly dot shaped and nowhere resemble a hazy stroke. I guess it not to be the dot of an i but the cross of a t. His other 't's strengthen this guess.
Hi Prasad,
I found ur blog in some arbit google search.. and found it very interesting..
I think the name cud be Prempratima. :)
How wonderful!
I found the handwriting extremely stylish.
I am sucker for good handwriting. Hardly get to see hand written stuff nowadays...
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