I last met Pammi uncle about 10 years ago by chance at the Delhi airport. It was early December, so we were both wearing half-jackets that sat between the cold of a full winter and warmth of autumn. As we glimpsed each other across a row of seats, no words were exchanged - we simply pointed to each other’s jacket pockets and laughed - he had a book sticking out of his, I had a kindle sticking out of mine.
I started reading early - the earliest book I remember picking out myself is an illustrated classics edition of “Adventures of Tom Sawyer”.
I was lucky in having multiple influences to nudge me into the reading habit.
My mother - though never a reader herself, always made sure I had ample opportunities to “discover” reading. She was then a teacher, and used to get me a steady supply of age-appropriate books from her school library - starting with Famous Five, then Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, then Roald Dahl and Jim Corbett. As I grew older, she subscribed to a varied diet of Tinkle, India Today, and Scientific American. This gave me a strong fascination for stories, for good storytelling and the cutting edge in Science (bordering on SciFi for me at the time!) I recently asked her how she got me such a varied reading diet - she herself doesn’t remember much, but remembers that she asked people (like the librarians, cousins and other colleagues) and curated books for me.
Pammi uncle - a close family friend, an IFS officer based in Dehradun. His house had my dream room - a proper private library - one whole room with all 4 walls stacked with bookshelves, all of them full to bursting (they were in fact bursting - some books just sat in piles on the floor). Once he discovered I was a Potterhead - he used to land up at my house at 6am on the day a new book was supposed to be released, and take me to Natraj Bookstore to pick up one of the earliest copies they sold for the day (they used to open early just for Potter release days).
My father was a voracious reader too, in both Hindi and English. I think some genetics played a part in transferring his general reading appetite to me, but the specifics were somehow lost - probably because we never got much time to bond over books. I still have some of his books, but haven’t really gotten around to reading them. Some day perhaps.
90s kids will remember the Scholastic Book fair that schools used to put up on the last day before summer holidays kicked in - often with one assigned reading book for the hols. It was almost like a bookstore picked itself up and came to you.
My relationship with reading has evolved over the years. A few things remain the same - I tend to get utterly lost in books I really like - to the extent that work or life itself suffers and I have to tear myself away (I remember finishing a Dan Brown book in a single sitting from 11pm - 5am in college once. I’m not sure if I’m proud of that). I am a sucker for really long series with sprawling world-building and characters I can fall in love with. And I keep coming back to the comfort of Fantasy or Sci-Fi every once in a while.
Yet, a few things are different too. I’m much more comfortable not finishing books (or even series I’ve invested significant time into) - my “DNF” shelf on Goodreads is growing. I’m starting to get a little more intentional about what I read - curating my bookshelf a tiny bit to get deeper and more diverse perspectives. Such as reading the source materials like Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” or Aurelius’ Meditations instead of derived literature like Manson’s; reading more of the classical Sci-Fi that I actually missed (Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke); and a little bit of inroads into Hindi literature as well (this one’s not going too well unfortunately - but I will keep trying). I think I also need to diversify my reading into books that unsettle me and challenge my worldview - but one step at a time.
Now that I have started writing, I think my approach to reading is also evolving. The content that I save and highlight now captures not just what resonates, but also snippets that make me go “wow”. These passages are building up my inner world and slowly finding their way into my writing now.
Most of my reading is now done on my Kindle - a workhorse that’s been going on for close to 12 years now (fingers crossed). 1 The simple act of highlighting nice passages and then revisiting them once in a while is quite something. If you use a system like Readwise - it even throws your older highlights back to you - almost like a little time machine.
I love visiting the legendary Bangalore bookstores - Bookworm and Blossoms - once in a while. On the surface you can tell they’re different, but they only reveal their magic once you look deeper (in opposite directions though - you must go up in Blossoms, and go down into Bookworm). I will always choose the old musty smell, the almost claustrophobic gullies, the hidden nooks and crannies where you can discover literal hidden gems, and the whispered conversations 2 over the gleaming new bookstore chains. The fact that they accept old books is the cherry on top - almost feels like an endless supply of books.
Talking about endless supply of books - I really tried to find good libraries around me. For myself, as well as for S (my 4yr old). My society has a small library, but somehow it seems populated more by castaways rather than thoughtful efforts (it has 7 copies of “Autobiography of a Yogi”. 7.) While there are a few private efforts in Bangalore like Nuk, Toölo, etc. - the public library system seems woefully inadequate in a country that is apparently the 2nd highest book-reading nation in the world. 3 And there seem to be no good digital library systems like Libby that work well in India. Alas. 4
My one regret is that I never explored the libraries I had available at my school or colleges. Maybe too much was already going on - there was already a lot to do, lots to read and consume that I didn’t feel the need to explore them thoroughly. Or perhaps the overwhelm of going there and finding a ton of academic books and not enough fiction kept me from going back?
I’m in half a mind to set up a peer-to-peer library system tbh - simply maintain a list of books one has on a shared google sheet and exchange with members. What say? I might actually try it if enough people are enthu.
Whenever I’m choosing a new book to read, I feel like Rishi Bharadvaj from the Puranas. In the parable, he spent several lifetimes studying the Vedas, and wanted to extend his life forevermore to be able to “finish” and absorb them in their entirety. Indra showed him that everything he had read over 5 lifetimes amounted to about three small mounds of sand at their feet, while the Vedas were the size of 3 large mountains in the distance. 5
Well, I cannot extend my life this way (I am allergic to severe penance, thank you very much). I do despair — how will I read all the good books there are to read? But I do have a son. The first part of his inheritance is a love for reading - passing down what his grandmother started with me. My heart fills up as I see him starting to string together 3-letter words on his own. His bookshelf almost rivals mine, and every alternate Sunday we go to Nuk, where I have a 3 book plan running. We return the previous 3 books and get 3 more. Sometimes all 3 books are for him, sometimes I borrow a book for myself and he gets 2. Sometimes he chooses, sometimes I choose for him.
In either case, I’m the winner.
Footnotes
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I believe Kindle was the first device to use Amazon’s famed PR-FAQ format for debating new products and features. The first time I read Kindle’s launch note (which was just out of curiosity, much after I actually got the product), I was awed with the elegance of the product. Still blows my mind 10 years later. ↩
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https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-books-read-per-year-by-country says Indians rank #2 in the world on number of books read per year; as well as time spent reading. Pinch of salt though - stats may be skewed by academic reading and not purely reflect leisure / casual reading by adults ↩
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It would be interesting to do the math of supply of books from 2nd hand stores v/s a library membership - what would be cheaper? ↩