Time for Some Leisurely Perusal

The last time I read a novel was maybe when I was in Chennai. It has been so long back now. Reading was fun then, Landmark was the most frequented shop, in fact the first place visited after every salary got credited. And sometimes there was this overwhelming greed to read, that we often indulged in the long abandoned barter system, exchange any book for any other. Thanks to those others who were equally crazy, they too were ready to read anything that they could lay their hands on. 

Thanks to Dad who lead me into the amazing world of books. He made sure that I read every important book, the Ramayana, the Panchathantra, the speeches of Vivekanda, My Experiments with Truth and many more. Vikramaditya was an all time favourite. The "Vetal" always took me into the world of fantasy, I always wished I too had one to myself, not on my back, but me on his back, and then he could probably take me into unknown lands of yore. Since I had finished going through the books in Dad's library, he got me this one on Russian revolution from a close friend's. It was a book by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Shokolov called " And Quiet Flows the Don". I literally had to put in a whole lot of effort in reading this one, but then I did finish it off successfully. I was just in my eight standard or so then, so the level of understanding was pretty low, but I still remember the pictures that it formed in my mind and every time I think of the book, those pictures come rushing back. Probably I had given in too much time into understanding the book, that I ended up forming such ever non-fading pictures of it in my mind. Dad kept getting me more and more books whenever he could. One another book I remember is Arundhati Roy's, "God of Small Things". Critics gave conflicting reviews on the book, but the little girl that I was, it was something in the lines of the Sholokov book for me. It somehow connected up everything. Revolutions, no matter where they happen, are revolutions and they do bring about strong transformations. A lot many thoughts were evoked by this one. I still feel I could not understand them well enough then. Every another time I try to revisit them, they make new revelations. These are games that these magicians play, the books, they are so slow revealing, even better than the Dark Knight viral marketing strategy sometimes. They can keep you pinned down to them like never ever and then do the same again, every time you go back to them. Thanks to Dad, he kept me busy with books. 

Dad's elder brother was another inspiration. His library always kept luring me every time I visited his place. It was in school that the spark of reading was probably struck. The first books were Charles Dickens classics, Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, The Wizard of Oz, and slowly onward to W.B. Dixen, Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew, Perry Mason and so on. Whatever I could  not lay hands on in school, I used to grab them at my uncle's place. The sight of Charles Dickens classics there made me read them all over again when I went there once, in the ninth or so. Shakespeare was another favorite.Then it was the Sherlock Holmes series. I read all of them, just to make sure that I stayed updated on Holmes and Watson, in case anyone bothered to ask. ;) Got a chance to delve deeper into Shakespeare, in school. Those were the original verse versions which we had to learn as a part of the curriculum. We were all so taken backward in History by the obsolete version of English, that we made it a habit to converse in the Elizabathen style. Words like thy, thee, thou, ere, yore, the -eth suffixed words and the likes were the most used on the list. The books in the curriculum always lead to do more of their kind, and similarly some of the poetries and some of those catchy quotes. 

Once in college, a huge wave swept me away into the land of Science fictions. My little brother Abhishek, used to get me books by Robert Cook from the school library, only until he was once asked the summary of one of them and he failed to even mumble the title of the book and that was it. I had to look for other sources and again back to Dad. He got me a whole lot of books on Stephen Hawking and his works. The black holes looked the most enchanting thing at that point of time and there was this shift in ambition, the sudden urge to become a scientist or sometimes, even a space scientist. Well, after college I knew there was no space for space scientists in the company that I got recruited into. So I decided to become more open minded and expanded my horizon for variety books.

Once in Chennai, the choosiness had almost completely disappeared. I was once again all happy to read anything that I came across, though there was still this left over liking for Stephen Hawking. So I read some more of him before getting into more variety. Sidney Sheldon was the most easily available one, since our neighbors had a whole collection. Then at some point sprung up this new nosiness for love stories. The first one in line was well, Erich Segal's, "Love Story". It felt boring in the beginning, something so mushy and not so like those detective and science fictions types. But then I liked it as it caught on. Then I gave in for more of such kind, one was "Sundays at Tiffany's" by James Patterson, almost like the Twilight sagas, too unreal, but then engaging enough. The worst part was this curiosity to know what "Mills and Boons" was actually all about. Every time we landed up at Landmark, we spotted those large offers put up on this one. The curiosity was rising with every visit and finally we bought one. We ended up wondering how anyone could write just for the sake of making people drool. One read was more than enough to figure out why they were on attractive offers and always marketed so grandly. That was probably the last time I read a novel. 

After coming to IIML, I had almost forgotten my way into that land of books. But today is a special day, I am back on my path and now I am hoping to get lost in the world of books all over again. :) This is the most beautiful world that anyone could ever visit, the safest sojourn, so engaging and least demanding. They simply are the best of friends that anyone could ever make and the most faithful too. So I am all ready to sign in again for this rendezvous with books and hope I get to stay long enough this time.