About Reading

I have always been an avid buyer of books. I am using the word “buyer” consciously here. I have been collecting books (like Peter Kien in Elias Cannetti’s Auto da Fe who lived among and for his books) for the last twenty years. Before that, I didn’t need to. I was not married and my father owned a book store in the famous “boi para” of Kolkata—one of the oldest and the most reputed book stores of Kolkata. That is another tale I must write—to preserve my memories, to redeem myself, to give voice to my dreams.

For now, back to my habit of collecting books. I sorely missed the feel of books all around me—this was not a conscious missing. I didn’t know I was buying books to recreate my bookstore and the bliss I had felt there. I would, almost everyday, walk down to Flora Fountain, the “boi para” of Bombay after college and on my way to VT. I used to study in Elphinstone and Fountain was my haunt. In retrospect, I know what drew me to Fountain almost involuntarily everyday. It was its similarity to College Street (the actual name for boi para). I would browse through the books on the footpath outside the Telegraph Office and would be transported back to the small, cramped bookstores almost seeming to grow on the walls outside the Presidency College like huge mushrooms. The bookstalls of Fountain sated some of the cravings for home that an 18-year old suddenly uprooted from all things familiar can feel. I clung to this comforting familiarity and made my sojourn everyday.

I have diverged from the main point of this post. I was going to write about my habit of collecting books and why I had said “collecting” as opposed to “reading.” It started on the footpaths of Bombay and has continued. In the last twenty years I have collected numerous books on all possible topics—literature, language, philosophy, sociology, fiction, comics, and so on and on.

I had always been an avid reader till I started buying books twenty years ago. After that, the more I bought, the less I read. I was hoarding for some idyllic future when I would have time to read—never realizing that I would not get the time I had when I was 17. I hoarded and hoarded and read very little. I read those that barely taxed my brains.

Then, everything changed. I met someone six months ago. When I told him about all the books I had, he asked me how many I had read. I kept quiet. He asked me which, for me, were the most important ones. I could think of none. He asked me which two of those thousands of books had changed my life. I was speechless. I had no answer to these seemingly simple questions. Never had anyone affected me so profoundly, shaking me up to my very soul, making me realize the self deception I had been practicing. I felt ashamed, agitated, inadequate.... I had ceased to think, leading a vacuous and lazy existence. I had abandoned life and all that went with it, electing to remain in a comfort zone I hated merely because it was the easy option. I know today how inane I had been, and also a coward afraid to accept the responsibility of changing my life.

That conversation transformed me. I knew I had to go back to reading. I knew I had to wake up from this state of mental lethargy and somnambulence. I felt the urge to recreate myself, reinvent myself. I went back to him and asked him to tell me some books I should read. He asked me to read Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. In one of my trips to Oxford Book Store in Park Street, I picked it up. I won’t go into an analysis of the book here. But all I will say is it made me think. After a very long time, I was using my intellect, enjoying the challenge; my self pride was creeping back. I rediscovered my passion and myself. I found in him an intellect and an analytical intensity that I can only marvel at and learn from.

My ardor, excitement, and fervor for knowledge have come back. I want to analyze and think. I can feel this change invading my personality making me the person I like being with. I have taken up writing once again. Suddenly, I have things to write about—everything that has lain dormant for twenty years are clamoring to be given a voice.