Bookish

When I was a kid, I used to be what you might call a “voracious reader”. I was a shy kid, quiet and aloof, and would hardly speak to family but I found a friend in books. I’d almost always be found curled up in a corner of the home, book in hand. I’d read while having my meal as well, much to the chagrin of my folks. I had over a hundred volumes of Tinkle and perhaps every perceivable copy of Amar Chitra Katha books on Indian mythology, apart from several editions of Champak, Chandamama and Gokulam. This was my initiation into the world of books, and once I was big enough to read a proper novel, I started with the marvellous St Clare’s series by Enid Blyton, following it up with Famous Five and Nancy Drew books.

My school had a fairly good library and it’s from the depths of the musty shelves in that room that I fished out Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K Jerome. I laughed so hard till my stomach hurt. I re read the book a few years ago and it was just as hilarious. Swami and Friends by RK Narayan was the first Indian novel I read, and I was so emotionally invested in the story that I cried when it ended. From there on, I moved to popular books by authors like Jeffrey Archer ( Kane and Abel was one of the earliest books I’d read), but it wasn’t until I went to college that I was exposed to more interesting books.

I may not remember the story or most of the characters in a book that I read, but I most definitely remember how the book made me feel. For instance, Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead made a huge mark on me and I went on to read Atlas Shrugged, which made me all sad, angsty and upset. Catcher in the Rye helped address some of my teenage angst and rebellion. Albert Camus was my hero and for a while, I was so into existentialism especially after reading Happy Death, which was not as morbid as I thought it’d be; it is in fact my favourite Camus book more so because of his strikingly handsome face on the cover. The Outsider made me depressed and conflicted.

But there were two books that stood out for me: the weird and wonderful Catch 22, and the unbelievably funny Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I’d lent the latter to a friend and instead of returning it to me, a bunch of my friends (including him) gifted me the entire hitch hiker omni bus with all five books in the series ( the author had called it a trilogy of five). And it was around then that I realised that I love funny books; even now I look for books with a sense of humour and I love the Alexander McCall smith series, Sue Townsend and Gary Shteyngart ( ‘Absurdistan’ is a riot!). I read a fair amount of non fiction too and I’ve taken a special liking to the Indian writer Samanth Subramanian’s works. Chimamanda Adichie’s works gave me deeper, fresher insights into feminism and race, while Pico Iyer kindled my wanderlust. I just finished a book of short stories, Loyal Stalkers, by Chhimi Tendufla, a Sri Lanka based writer, and I’m hoping to read The Diary Of A Provincial Lady, next up.

Sadly though, I’m not the kind of reader I once was; definitely not “voracious”. My appetite for books has shrunk and I take forever to complete a book, sometimes months. I’ve abandoned several books too ( mostly because of their intimidating size) such as Born To Run, Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, and A Suitable Boy, the classic.

Hopefully I’ll stop scrolling my phone or flipping through Netflix and Amazon Prime, and get some reading done soon. Do hit me up with book recommendations and tell me what you’ve been reading.