My spectacular world of books
I am really proud of my friends because they are more joyful than me. When monsoon arrives, they are always on their toe to spend at least a spectacular evening in a beach resort looking at the waves, the incessant rain and the green environment when discussing mundane things with a glass of Red wine. Why particularly red wine, surprisingly all of them have addicted to red wine, because they are a different breed altogether. Even in my case my wife and daughter always finds fun in saying that I am a different species.
Being an avid reader I always prefer to spend my quality time in my library flanked by my beloved titles, this probably irks my wife and daughter because I often deny them ample space to interact. Books are more than my friends! Whenever I walk into a bookstore the first thing I like to do is to look at the shelves filled with thousands of worthy novels. Then a wonderful feeling starts brewing in my mind as if I have walked into a sacred place. When I look at them I see innumerable possibilities to embark on an exciting journey. The fact that I do write and read a lot can’t be whisked out of existence. I began writing because I wanted others to read me. I began reading because I have always believed that words are objects of art by themselves even without being inserted into a narrative frame.
I believe that writers are sensitive souls. They shape words into luminous sentences and the sentences into exquisitely crafted paragraphs. They weave the paragraphs together into a near perfect article, fiction, poem or review. According to me books are a part of their soul. Writing is not something, which they do for themselves; it is something they like to share with the world and to connect with people and their feelings.
In today’s modern world people have TV to watch soaps and reality shows with interest. They visit Malls to go on a shopping spree. They compare the advantage of one credit card over another even though they have repetitive stress disorders. They go to different eateries and wonder, which tastes better, Italian, Thai or South Indian food etc. They question the regime in power even though they have patience to live with it. We writers often get sandwiched between these and still deserve to be read voraciously.
The old reliables —Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov, Boris Pasternack, Ernest Hemingway, Emile bronty, Thomas mann, victor hugo, pushkin and D H Lawrance — have been with me for more than two decades. 5 years ago they got delighted to receive Orhan Pamukh, Jose Saramago, Carlos funtes, Mario vergas llosa, Umberto eco, and Gabriel Garcia Marques. Last summer they were in a buoyant mood while receiving Gunter Grass, Haruki Murakami, Saul Bellow, J M Coetzee, Gao Xingjian, J D Salinger and Sandor Marai. This summer they received Jhumpa Lahiri, Patrick French, Milan Kundera and Elizabeth Kostova. They are still waiting to receive more with cheers.
By actively campaigning against holidaying for years, I unceremoniously built my own world. Every summer, there may be a birthday party, marriage anniversary or an outing for fun. Each and every friend of mine cultivated a habit of calling me and saying that “I know you won’t be interested but I am sure you will definitely make up your mind”.
How I’ve ended up with such well-motivated friends is obvious — I always crave for friends like me who prefer sitting in their homes or in some remote village flanked by silence to read wonderful books and hide their faces from the fun filled and noisy crowd.
I grew up in a family of good readers and cherished reading some of the greatest classics, but now gradually I am getting distanced myself from reading due to the commitments of my job and my new found passion for blogging. When I was a child, I read like a maniac. I read everything I got, poetry, mysteries, ancient classics — and even old textbooks from the collection of my father.
I am often staggered out of my make-believe world, if the phone rings during monsoon. In between the bounty of these larger opus, when I have some evenings to myself, I prefer to be with Zorba (Zorba the Greek – Nikos Kazantzakis) enjoying the rain spreading diaphanous veil over the immortal nakedness of Greece or with Urania Cabral (The feast of the goat – Mario Vargas llosa) who woke up paralyzed by a sense of catastrophe to think that he owe everything to discipline or with Casanova (Casanova in Bolzano – Sandor Marai) when he is asking a question to Teresa that “ I am not asking you what you feel in general about life, about men or about love. What I am asking is what you feel when I touch you, when I encompass that piece of your arm above your elbow with two fingers, what you feel when I touch your heart – like this – what you are feeling now, this very moment?”
To me, reading is comfort, company, a way to buffer oneself from the pain and isolation of the everyday scores. It is the peace I find by visiting my closest friends, books.
To me, there is my own world —the spectacular world of books.
