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The Reading Habit: A Story of Personal Transformation
I wonder what would have become of me without books. My thoughts would have been as disorganized as they had been during the major part of my formative years. The love for books and literature had always been there, albeit, just below the surface. It never had the inducement that it needed to bloom. I knew the classics had something important to say, but either because of my laziness, or my timidity, or due to their sheer inaccessibility, I was never able to engage with books for any meaningful time. You need time for the beauty of words to grow on you. But bloom it did, quite by accident and much to my regret, quite late in life. It was towards the end of my third decade that I stumbled into a book store in the US that had all the books by R K Narayan that I’d ever wanted to read. The enthusiasm with which the employee showed me to the neatly stacked rows of books in various editions was perhaps the beginning of this journey. Once I stumbled onto them, I knew I’d found something I wanted to hold on to for dear life. Some chord deep inside me was struck when I was in the company of Tolstoy, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Narayan, Tagore etc. This ‘journey’ took me to the ideas of many other eminent thinkers. On the way, I came to terms with some of the deepest questions bothering me. In the interim, my thinking became a lot more lucid. I had greater clarity on what to do and where to go. On another note, why is it that I read? What do I gain of it? In the initial days, I read just to search for the answers I was seeking. The first few books could have been much harder, but for the authors I had chosen. R. K Narayan is one of the easiest authors, in my opinion, to help you get initiated into reading. Most of his books are rather short; in fact, ‘Swami and Friends’, his most delightful work, is just over a hundred pages. Starting with Narayan, I progressively began tackling much bigger/complex works. To my surprise, the more I read, the easier it got. By the time I got to ‘War & Peace,’ I as devouring books; I was flying! By then, reading was so natural to me that on occasions, it was very difficult to tear myself away from a book—so engrossing was the narrative. ‘The Tale of Two Cities’ was so exhilarating that I liken it to white water rafting. I was so caught in the words Dickens was weaving that I did not know what turn it was going to take. Nor what I was going to hit. I was awash with water all over my body, so exciting was the ride that by the time I reached the climactic last scenes, I was dazed, exhausted, overwhelmed. It took me a while to get my composure back. The pleasure (or intense moments such as above) is only one part of what reading gave me. As I had alluded, it gave me a sense of direction; it cleared my head of a lot of non-sense. It allowed me to see things much more clearly. Most of all, I realized that the problems I was grappling with were not unique. These are the same issues that most of humanity had to contend with. The more I explored, the more I realized that I had more in common with the rest of the world than not. Regardless of time and space, most suffered, loved, lost, and won as I had suffered, loved, lost or won. That was reassuring and comforting. Reading also gave me a familiarity with the language and its usage. I am now able to articulate many thoughts much more clearly than what I had hitherto been able to. No longer am I a bystander. Not only was I enjoying my interaction with the rest of the world, I was also influencing it. In small ways perhaps, but influencing it nevertheless. Until then, I was seen as a serious and withdrawn person. Now, my language skills gave me the impetus to approach people and strike up conversations. There was no topic that I was shy about. Earlier, I sought refuge in the background; now, I was readily seeking limelight. And to my delight, the world was making way for me. Articulation opened many windows, both personally and professionally, that I never even knew existed. Through the characters and situations in books, I was vicariously able to live many lives across many ages. No longer was the Russian peasant of the 19th century unknown to me. I ploughed with him in ‘Anna Karenina,’ as I had waded through the drains of Paris in ‘Les Miserables’. American landscape in the early 20th century (‘My Antonia’ and ‘Grapes of Wrath’), life in 2540 London (‘Brave New World’), India after independence or Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg—been there and done that! No aspect of life surprises me anymore. I now approach situations with much more confidence because my mind has lived through many more experiences than what the daily reality has to offer. Now, how could you weigh the worth of this education? Is there any curriculum in the world that can teach you this? If at all anything can, it is reading. It is for these reasons, among many, that I read. Another happy consequence is that it can pave the way into the world of writing.
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