I
could trace the start of my journey with books to when I was eleven,
but then I would be wrong...it's true that I read my first novel at
that age, but my love affair had begun years before as I would listen
to my father reading stories from the antics of "Tenida"
and his goof ball friends written by Narayan
Gangopadhyay (Oh! I loved them so!) and the crazy rhymes of "Abol
tabol" composed by Sukumar Roy (literal translation is
gibberish, how amazing is that!). I had tried reading comics before
reading proper novels, "Tintin", "Archies" and
"The
Adventures of Asterix" but the pictures were too distracting,
instead of reading I would start drawing and coping the pictures from
them! I wouldn't have started reading if my parents hadn't insisted
that I must (the teachers from my school were complaining that I
wouldn't participate in class activities and my language
and grammar needed improvement). Hence my father in his infinite
wisdom (supposedly!) gifted me an abridged version of the classic
"The Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson and I have
never looked back since then...I always had a very active imagination
and I needed some words to give life to the pictures in my head, and
my gosh! it was so amazing to imagine Long John Silver with his
wooden pegged leg, bearing a parrot on his shoulder and Jim Hawkins
with his innocent face, I mean what's not to like? I had finally
discovered an outlet for my thoughts and imagination, I was hooked!
This was followed by "Kidnapped" by the same author, I
don't remember much of the story except the scene where the boy is
made to climb stairs in pitch darkness without the comfort of a
candle and he almost falls since the stairs end abruptly into
nothingness! And "Moby Dick", oh what a tale of adventure! Oh gosh! If
I have to go on and on about all the books I have read in my life
that would be pretty long and not quite engaging, what I would do
instead is recount the incident and the book which were pivotal and
helped me to walk on ahead in life...And this is absolutely true,
these books proved to be my best friends when my life wasn't going
well (okay I'll admit what I mean is when life wasn't really good is
actually when things are really bad and crappy! the worst ever!!)
I
shall with physical injuries and move on to emotional ones. I had
been having this intense pain in my lower abdomen sometime in my
early twenties which later turned out to be acute appendicitis
(not a pretty picture at all) and had to undergo an operation...the
operation part and the first day of fuzziness and pain was okay and
somewhat bearable, but what really got to me were the the next two
days...I had nothing to do, no one to talk to, alone in a sterile
hospital bed and I couldn't even walk around....it was hell...I
wouldn't have survived through those two days had it not been for
"The Talisman", a Stephen King and Peter Straub novel...now
I was and still am really into gory horror stories and had been a
great fan of the Goosebumps series penned by R.L.Stine, in
my early teens, although growing up I wasn't really satisfied
with the simplistic plot and prose (it was quite juvenile and my
sister could kill me for saying this since I think she liked them
even after adolescence and the pre-and post? twenty phase!)...from
R.L.Stine I had moved on to Stephen King, which satisfied my need for
gore as well as complex story telling...and this particular book
about a boy trying to save his mother's life and his frequent
journeys to the Stephen king's version of the Neverland, "the
Territories" a strange fantasy land, just sealed my loyalty to
him and his franchise forever, I never tire of a Stephen King novel
(except the one about a dog, "Cujo", couldn't finish that
one for the life of me!).
This
was a major injury but there were very many times when I had sprained my
ankle (since I hate paying attention to where I am going usually,
easily distracted by everything that is happening around me I often
fall down and hurt myself!) and often during such times I would
resort to Miss Marple and Monsieur Poirot to help me pass the tedious
moments that I am trapped in bed....I had also without fail needed a
new mystery by Agatha Christie every time I traveled from Kolkata
(home) to Durgapur (Hostel aka HELL! where I had spent four years to
earn a B.Tech degree), the train ride took around 3 hours and the
journey started from Howrah in the wee hours of the morning and the
book would help me stay awake through the three hours journey. I
usually traveled alone those mornings and there were high chances of
me sleeping through the stop to Durgapur (train was bound for
Dhanbad!) which would have been quite disastrous to say the least!
It was during the four years I had spent in Durgapur that I read “The
Rainbow” by D.H. Lawrence, it was such a hard book to read! I had
read his short stories before but never a full-fledged novel and I
had to consult a dictionary for many words for I couldn't quite get
the meaning of and there were so many of them! Usually when I don't
exactly know what a particular word means I just read the sentence a
number of times and try to grasp the meaning of the sentence and this
helps me to understand what the word means but didn't help with
Lawrence and his ornate style! No matter how much I crib and cry it
was worth it, such a beautifully written story, some scenes from the
book are seared in my memory even now, the part where Anna, heavily pregnant dances naked in her bedroom and Will her husband sees her
dancing in such abandonment, feeling alienated from her, amazing!
Such intense contorted feelings!
Few
years down the line, after the exuberance of early twenties had
settled, I was going through a rough phase, recovering from a break
up and a bad relationship, and it was during those bleak years when I
discovered Haruki Murakami. I had at last started reading “Kafta on
the shore” after a friend and my sister recommended that I
must...and it was such a surreal experience that I moved about in a
dream-like state for the whole month...every time I read any of his
books (my favourite till date is "Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the
world", "The wind-up bird chronicle" comes a close second) I lose my
perception of reality, it is essentially the best and most “trippy”
feeling I have ever had and I absolutely love it! Few years back I
discovered Amitav Ghosh, a voice from Bengal, he restored my faith in story telling (I was losing interest in contemporary authors, real popular ones who wrote absolute crap, this was more of an intellectual injury if I may say so!!) and his depiction of
Sundarbans in “the Hungry tide” did poetic justice to the beauty
of the mangrove forest...I had been to Sundarbans as a child but
after reading the book, I had to go again to lose myself in the lush
green forest along the forking river. And of course, J.K Rowling and the Harry Potter series, I must admit I used to make fun of my sister and my friends who were great fans, I discovered this world of magic a little late but my word! What a rich world! Absolutely loved it, I remember finishing the whole series of books in a week!! I couldn't wait to read to the end, a beautiful read indeed!
In recent times,
due to a busy adult life comprising of work, marriage and what-nots (often laziness since it's easier to lose myself staring at the computer screen watching TV series and moves rather than reading which is at times rather taxing on the imagination at least for me since I imagine whatever I read as if I am watching the scene right before my eyes!),
my habit of reading has diminished, earlier I would finish one
book in a week, now it takes a month or two...but I don't really
sweat it out, since books are such an important part of my life, no
matter how busy or stressed I get I would need a book when I travel,
sometimes before going to bed and often just like that...they are
like old friends, they just keep popping up...and I do feel pangs of guilt
when I ignore them too much...but they never cease to provide me with
a sense of warmth and comfort.
