As a child I seldom touched novels. To be more specific, I ran away from
them, as if those innocent pages had the ability to burn my skin. I wonder
whether I will ever be able to jot down the reasons adding to my apathy against
reading during those early days. It has been years, yet I cannot stop thinking
about those days, about all those times I did not lay my eyes upon the sacred
texts which opened the portals to new dimensions of our Universe, opened the
doors to our very own world sometimes, a world which otherwise is very good at wrapping
up its secrets. Perhaps I was too lazy to run my eyes along the lines or
perhaps assumed the task of processing meaning from words to be too exhausting.
Well, whatsoever the reason was, I miserably regret that specific apathy I had.
However, being raised by parents who were avid readers, as good as book
worshippers, I never suffered from the lack of a good read. During middle
school, when I talked about books, which was very rare, I remember how my
classmates were often taken by surprise when it came to their understanding
that every other book they mentioned, had a copy securely hibernating in one of
the shelves in my home. That was how I realized that books were not as common
as table salt or pepper. They could have been however, if the world was not as
ignorant as I was. That was the time during which I started valuing books. Not
because I wanted to read them, but because I wanted to capture that rare
essence, under the influence of the knowledge that very few were fortunate
enough to be surrounded by the yellowing pages of wisdom.
I did not love them, I knew that very well. In fact, it marked the
beginning of my lust for books. I often confided my feelings in them by
momentarily visiting the racks. I spent hours turning pages, not reading, but
skimming. Not one book at a time, but maybe ten at one go. I turned to random
pages, selected random paragraphs, read until it failed to enrapture me with
its spell, and of course, it was not long before I abandoned that page for
another. While walking through the chaos of random sentences, I seldom took to
smelling the wary books. They smelled of old pages, and as days passed, it
became my smoke of ecstasy. When I got wary of not finding enough magic in the
sentences, the fragrance became my rescue, and oddly enough, I used to feel
that even that strange smell restored wisdom in me, as if through osmosis.
Perhaps it was my personal way of making up for the years lost in
running away from the goblet of pure knowledge, or at least, believing that I
was making up.
It was a matter of years, and then, even though it should have been
sooner, I realized that I had the potential to love. I did not just mingle with
the pages for their ecstatic smell or for the selfish motive of quick wisdom,
but for the very first time, I wanted to know what that page had to say. I
read.
That was when I was taken aback by the power a book could carry. I was
astonished to feel my mind under the influence of simple ink on parchment. The
words stayed with me, and it was as I had lived a hundred years at a very ripe
age. To put it in simple terms, I realized that a book could carry me beyond
ages and places without any restraint in time or space, essentially because of the
naïve mind. If you have studied your biology well, you will know that most of
our senses report to our mind and then the mind processes that particular
feeling or stimuli. Well, a book becomes our senses when we readers indulge in
one. It directly feeds the stimuli to our mind, and our mind helps us get
carried away to worlds far beyond our very own.
My love for books was complicated. Once I started with one of their
pages, I couldn’t stop. I could read until my eyes hurt or my mind got
exhausted with the extensive travel. I knew this was insane, and quite risky,
given my role as a student in this world. I had to get back to tasks, which was
of course, a mountain of struggles. But I managed to get back, because “it does
not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live”.
There was a problem though. Once I exited my fantasies, I found it
very difficult to go back, knowing very well that it will take me a solid
effort to pull out of one as soon as the reality ushers me again. After months
on end I stayed away from my books. Not because I did not want to read one, but
because I had to sort out my priorities, and the list was not very often headed
by very pleasing tasks. But I would come back when I could and spend days on end
completing rows of books at one go.
I was like a soldier fighting against the daily calls of duty,
coming back home after months to express my love to those closest to the heart. Books
were my family, they were my home. Perhaps that is why they advise us to be
avid readers, because books have the power to keep our homesick hearts at bay.
They are like tiny blocks of our home which has its foundation in a parallel
Universe. They are a part of ourselves living apart, in another world and in
another time.
With a book, every day is a hundred days crammed in one. “A reader lives
a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only once.”. It
is our ticket to a sunrise amid the stars.
16th June, 2018
Pictures: Google Images
