Books

I love reading and buying new books. The smell of the pages of a new book; to paraphrase a wonderful line from “apocalypse now” - I love the smell of freshly printed paper in the morning.

I have a kindle; have given it to the kids to use. Considering that my life is fairly digital; this is the one thing that Is very traditional- printed paper. 

How did it all start ? At Bishops’s from the very beginning standard 2 if I remember correctly we had a library period. Kids were expected to pick a book form the class library and read it over the next week and present a summary if called upon in the next weeks library class. My earliest memory of books that I remember are a couple of books by Enid Blyton - the Sai’s pan man, and the far away tree. Both thanks to the class library. There were others that I would have read but these 2 stand out. 

Fast forward a few years to class 7 . By now as part of literature we had already read abridged versions of Shakespeare and other authors. Class 7 was memorable because it introduced me to Dickens (David Copperfield) and George Elliot (Silas Marner) as part of English literature . We had a common middle school library with other divisions of the same class unlike in Jr school; where each class had its own library. The common library had the likes of The three Investigators, Hardy boys etc. 

Unknown to our teachers we had 2 private libraries running in class 7.  The books that one could borrow for 50p or Rs1 were the ones that expanded my exposure to a lot more. The library with the 50p books was run by a very close friend and it consisted predominantly of comic books - DC, Marvel, Archies, Tinkle, Amar Chitra Kathas, and diamond . The Amar Chitra Kathas sure helped in remembering history. I don’t think I would have remembered history as well if not for the ACK. There was also a few issues of Target and Sanctuary which I never took as I had an subscription to both magazines since the 5th. Target was a brilliant kids magazine published by Living Media and I had a subscription till the 10th grade. Sanctuary was a Indian magazine which was very nature and animal kingdom oriented. I had a subscription to that till the 8th grade. Back to the 7th grade and the 2nd private library; now this was an interesting library. It had modern literature I.e authors that were very popular in the mid 80s. Between a couple of friends we had started reading the likes of Leon Uris, Sidney sheldon and the likes in the 7th . One can argue that the ideas and language was a bit advanced for kids in the 7th grade. The 4/5 of us that read these authors were very comfortable with reading these authors as our parents knew ; in fact it all’s started with a very dear and close friend asking his dad if he could read a particular author. Once he was given a go ahead it snowballed into a small group that had permission from our respective parents to read books by modern authors. In fact one of my all time favourite novels is “Armageddon” by Leon Uris . I read it way back in 1985/86  for the first time. 

The reason to mention these 2 private libraries is that the following year in grade 8 ;  the library with novels had expanded to include pulp fiction authors like James Chase, Nick Carter and the like . The official library also had expanded for us to read the likes of Agatha Christie ( my all time favourite is then there were none) , P G Wodehouse etc. The private libraries were doing great and all of us were happy reading pulp fiction (blame it on teenage hormones). With all good things the library also had to end - we got caught and were hauled up to the Vice Principal’s office . Parents were called and the library never recovered. We also lost a good collection of books that were confiscated. 

Looking back school got me interested in reading and the habit was cultivated by my parents and close friends . It surprises me when I ask my children what books they exchange with their classmates - the answer is always no; and on asking further the reason is normally kids don’t read as much. I still exchange books with just a couple of friends (the same 4/5 from grade 7) because I know they will treat the books well. Others if they ask will get a flat out No. 

Sir Francis Bacon was absolutely correct when he famously ascertained “Reading maketh a full man”. Reading allows us to fill the mind with knowledge pertaining to a variety of topics which in turn helps us understand things from different points of view 

Do you read ? 

C