So Many Books, So Little Time

This post is autobiographical in nature. I have drawn from my past and tried to understand why I don't read anymore (at least as much as I like to). So if you want to indulge in bit of "me" or just humour me; you can proceed further. In any other case feel free to drop out now and maybe try this link (it is safe).

Stage 1

I am buying this book because I'm going to read it. 

Stage 2

I am going to read this book because I bought it.

Stage 3

Argh! Why did I buy this book?!

The aforesaid stages summarize the relationship between a book and me. Perhaps some of you can relate to it. I am not talking about avid readers who can devour a book in a day or maybe even few hours. Please pardon me but I'll also exclude the Will Huntings' of the world from this group.

I'm a reader. This is a bold statement (maybe false too). I am not sure I like reading. It is a habit I have picked up because of my father. He used to take me to the World Book Fair held every two years in Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. My best memories of the fair include; looking around at these stalls filled with books and the spicy chow-mein that was served in the canteen.

The Dreamland of Books

Treasure Island

Books are convenient and cheap way to enter a world of fantasy. I had a quite voracious appetite for books in my younger days. It was during the 1990s I developed a taste for reading books. I started with the illustrated classics for kids. My favourite was "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain. 

The photo of young Tom staring at the unending fence with a bucket of paint in his hand still puts me in at ease. The book that scared the crap out of me was "Kidnapped" by Robert Louis Stevenson. I used to imagine David Balfour bound and gagged in a cold & dark corner of a stony room with a ray of light coming in through a small crack in the ceiling!

Somehow I used to imagine (therein lies the rub?) a reel of scenes as I read. I used to hate when my mother would ask me to move from the sofa so she can remove some grains of mud! Somehow the world of the books felt so real. Tom, Huck, David, Tim, Horace, Ishmael etc.; felt like people I knew (pop quiz - name the books these characters are from?). 

I was bit of an eccentric when I was young. I even drew a treasure map with exact locations of Flint's treasure and then burnt the edges to make it look like an antique map. I was a fan of Long John Silver and admired Dr. David Livesey. I moved to some serious unabridged readings by the time I was in grade eight. I was in a blissful state.

Death of a Reader

Well, that was that. As the time turned pages of years the loss of hair has been compensated with a gain in weight. I somewhat stopped reading right around the time I began my high school. The circa 1999 was the beginning of the fall of reader in me. It was the same time I started exploring the internet. I remember the first time I created an email id for me on Yahoo. 

I was moving into the world of global connectivity but self-disconnect. Facebook was still a few years away for me. The concept of cable channels was catching up in India. No more Doordarshan and DD Metro. I was in the Star World and Discovery Channel days. My passion for reading was dying a slow death.

In the college days the reading was limited to mugging up formulas from photocopied pages of books. It continued like this for the next decade or so. I did read "The Tale of Two Cities" and a bit of Shakespeare, but as part of school curriculum. The books were packed away in boxes, never to be given a chance to see the daylight. 

Raising the Dead

Happythankyoumoreplease

"Can we stop running? I'm almost thirty.” says Josh Radnor's character to young Rasheen as he runs away from him in Happythankyoumoreplease (yup, that's the name of the movie). I don't know what Josh Radnor meant when he wrote this. To me it symbolizes a race I need to chuck myself out of and breathe my life.

What made me come back to books is a vague memory. It was in 2008-09 I began (re-)indulging myself in music, acting, writing, praying; basically all things that can make me think about life. All these events cumulatively made me to search for what others write about. 

As some say breathing is living, I believe thinking is moving. Breathing + Moving = Life. I realized to write you need to read first. It is only when I am ready to open myself to others I can expect my experience to make its way to the paper. This was the time I started asking more from life.

"So many books, so little time." -Frank Zappa

It is almost end of 2012 and I've so many things to read and a lot more to write about. I've a list of books I made and it keeps growing. A Mathematician's Apology, An Actor Prepares, Tell Me No Lies, Dalai Lama's autobiography, Pleasure Seekers, History of Islam, The Zoo Story....it goes on and on. I know I have to keep writing so it implicitly means I need to keep reading. Now internet is a great source of information, just a mouse click away. So what can I do but read!

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

- Mark Twain