My brother-in-law is one manipulative guy, if there was one in this world. I mean, give him a wire, and he will manipulate it into a cute little spectacle for the orang-utan soft toy in our living room. Yup, he is one manipulative guy! So when he asked me to write something about the places we have travelled, I said: NO WAY! And then just to snub him, I wrote about a movie I have seen and liked. And he comes back with a smug smile and says, ”My boy, you are inside Hotel California now...you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.... Once bitten by the bug, you cannot stop.” And now that he has manipulated me...again...I am like this love sick guy, who is unable to stop obsessing about what can be written next!
I wish I were a superhero, like my childhood favourites Phantom, Mandrake or Flash Gordon. Then I am sure I would be able to take care of these small niggles, and concentrate on saving the world! And before I knew, I was back in time when, as a kid, I first encountered “the ghost who walks”. It was....hero worship at first sight! Boy, can you imagine what it means to a 6 year old to have 2 guns and be able to fire them simultaneously and never miss!
The comic strips of The Phantom, published in The Telegraph were probably my first encounter with leisure reading. As is my nature, initially I wanted the easy way out, and would ask my mom to read it out for me... till the day, she decided to read out the riot act and said, “Either you read it on your own, or you don’t.” After a few days of tantrums, the rebellion petered out and I was on my own, reading all the adventures of the superheroes from this world and beyond! I was well and truly hooked.
Next up was the wonderful creations of Enid Blyton, The Famous Five. I still remember the first one I read: Five run away together. I dreamt of running away to my own version of Kirrin Island and eating all those foods which sounded sooooo nice. Treacle Tart, Sardine sandwich, bacon, sausages, ginger beer and many such wonderful-sounding foods, which I had never heard of before.
As I grew up and reached mid-teens, I also discovered Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and The 3 Investigators. I lapped it all up. This continued till the 8th standard. Then my father gifted me the complete works of Sherlock Holmes. The first one I read was The Hound of the Baskervilles. I still remember that after reading it, for days, I would be so scared to go to any dark place, even to the toilet! This was during my summer vacation, and I would literally shiver in the afternoon sweltering heat, while reading the story. Now that I look back in time, I realise that my entire school years, I would only read mystery and adventure stories. No fairy tales for me!
The next phase shift happened after my 10th standard exams. A book named “Of Human Bondage” written by a certain Somerset Maugham came in my possession. It changed my reading habit completely. I personally consider “Of Human Bondage” to be Maugham’s not just longest but also the most boring. Of course it’s a masterpiece, but I really struggled to finish it, especially the part where he stays in Paris. After that there was no looking back. I would have finished reading each of his short stories, and most of his novels, in the next 3-4 years. I still consider him my favourite. I was once told that Maugham was once considered for the Nobel Prize, but did not win it, as he was considered too popular! Imagine that!
This was also the period when I used to frequent the British Council Library in Calcutta. Those who have frequented the Calcutta BCL in the nineties would agree that the present library is no match to the one which was located on Theatre Road. The old library had a very good collection of classics and I lapped it all up. Around that time, Doordarshan was showing the BBC production of Middlemarch. I liked it and read up quite a few books written by George Eliot, viz. Adam Bede, Felix Holt, the Radical and of course Middlemarch. For the uninitiated, George Eliot’s real name was Mary Ann Evans, but she wrote under a male name, so that her work would be taken seriously!
The one good fortune I have had my entire life, is that different people have recommended various books, and I was meek enough to take the advice and in turn fortunate enough to have read a good variety of books. I still remember that summer afternoon I was browsing books in the Fiction section of BCL. There was this elderly lady beside me. She looked at me, and suddenly took out a book from the shelf and said, “This is a very good book for boys of your age”. It was “Out of the Shelter” by David Lodge. I never saw the kind lady again, but to this day, I am grateful to her for recommending the book.
After this, I have a case of Ghajini/Memento – short-term memory loss. I don’t remember the chronological order of type of books I read. But, somewhere down the line, the mix of reading became more diverse. My Physics tutor introduced me to “Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman” by the Physicist and Nobel laureate, Richard Feynman and to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. My mom encouraged me to read Daphne Du Maurier’s classics like Rebecca, Jamaica Inn and my favourite, Hungry Hill.
Somewhere, during this period, I read a few books on the holocaust, notable amongst them, “Inside the third Reich” by Albert Speer. This got me interested in a subject, I used to abhor during my school days, history! If you are interested in history of the Middle East, I would recommend “From Beirut to Jerusalem” by Thomas Friedman, who probably is more famous for his book “The World Is Flat”. I still have not read that one! Try out the “History of the Sikhs - Vol. I & II” by Khushwant Singh, if you want something closer home. It’s well researched and written in Khushwant Singh’s inimitable style.
Presently though, reading has become very irregular for me. I spend more time buying books, rather than actually reading them! One day, I actually sat down and counted the number of books I have bought but not read. It’s an embarrassing thirty-one!! My only defence is that, one day I will surely read all those books. Nowadays, due to this very irregularity, I read 2-3 books simultaneously. Presently, I am reading “The Mind’s Eye” by Oliver Sacks and re-reading “From Beirut to Jerusalem”. Oliver Sacks is a New York based neurologist, who writes medical cases, which are based on his experience of different patients of his. You must read his masterpiece, “The Man who mistook his wife for a Hat”.
But, if asked to pick the most enjoyable phase of my reading journey, I would pick the adventures of The Famous Five. Enid Blyton had this way with words, which captures your imagination for good.... I want to have a Treacle Tart right now.....
Happy reading!
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