Martin Gardner, puzzle master extraordinaire

I bought this book in 1986 for 50 Rupees [3]. Since it was a great book, I used to read it often, and many of my friends used to borrow it. Somebody borrowed it in 2007, and I never got it back. I searched the entire world for a copy, new or old, cheap or expensive .... I couldn't find one. Then a friend told me that if there is a copy anywhere in the world then he would buy it for me, no matter the price. He heard that it was available with Abe(?) Books in the U.S for $86, and ordered a copy. I waited for it to arrive ...... Then I got the regret message "Your consignment has been missed during transit, and we have no additional copy. Your payment will be redeemed however." I kept up my search. Then I got to know that a person in Koyilandy [4] had a copy, and I took a laptop and a scanner and journeyed from one end of Kerala to the other to reach there. It took 7 hours to scan the the entire book. I converted the entire corpus into text and edited it to make it identical to the original text, and added all the line drawings using CorelDraw to get it to its current form.

If you ever get your hands on this, then keep in mind that so much effort went into its making. Shouldn't I have done at least this much in return for the kindness which my good friend showed me, in offering to buy the book for me even at an exorbitant price? I offer this completed scan first to him, like a gift of the Magi [5]. I look back and think, was it worth it? Yes, absolutely.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala

[3] A significant sum in those days. A good meal could be had for 5 Rupees or less in those days.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyilandy

[5] He doesn't say "gift of the Magi" in so many words, but "a gift of a piece of a commonly found plant in return for a piece of broken slate pencil", but I guess the idea is somewhat similar.