My Enchanted World of Books

So far January reading

This year my resolution is very simple, read two books per month.Yeah, yeah I know, I played it safe. I always have. This is one undying passion apart from my work which has been a true calling. Can never do with fragile promises. Honestly the  rising tomes that we book lovers collect is quite astonishing each passing year. But so happy that it continues in this time of electronic readers. Sometimes we collect almost an alarming rate. In fact, the Japanese have a wonderful word for it. Tsundoku. Oxford Dictionary says, Tsundoku is a Japanese word that has no direct synonym in English. It means, ‘the act of leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piling it up together with other such unread books.’ 

This may be similar to being buried under a pile of unread books, which is every book lover’s guilty reality. With rising income, not to forget consumerism we book lovers start hoarding books with extra zeal. And I want to get out of that cycle badly this year. The start has been promising in more ways than one. Happy to say, so far, so good. New books read, old ones revisited and the picture looks quite promising I must say, but then it's early days yet. Just about to complete another on Kindle too naturally feeling rather peachy. Tomorrow is another day!

During my childhood it was a tradition to gift books for special occasions in an average middle class Bengali family. I still do and continue the tradition. I think it's very endearing. The earliest memory of books is for my fifth or sixth birthday.  Although I would be unable to read from these book myself  without assistance in those days but would spend hours looking at the pictures and the alphabets stringed together into sentences, It filled me with wonder. Even before I could read Alice I started to imagine her world thanks to Sukumar Ray. The bane of being an only child and a shy, awkward one at that is to create such wonderful worlds in the crevices of our mind. The world of books completely fascinated me.

The precious two gifts as I was saying, are however, lost from my collection but are still imprinted in my memory. They are - Sukumar Ray's Abol Tabol and Alexander the Great from Ladybird children series. Both the books had beautiful illustrations, one in black white and one in colour. One was strongly original with Sukumar Ray's gifted take of his unique characters of children's imaginative world and today's magic realism; the other was in colour with scenes of Whales guiding Alexander on the high seas. Both made lasting impressions and possibly why my interest in both Bengali and English literature till date remains equal. They had a magical impact upon me. My parents would help me patiently as I struggled and  spelled each word, more successfully in English as I learnt Bangla only later. The sense of achievement I felt by the time I was 7 or 8 was remarkable as I could now read unassisted. My parents must have heaved a huge sigh of relief.

Around this time I first came in touch with a library too. There is something healthy about borrowing books and reading I believe. Kind of finding kindred spirits. Borrowing books from friends strengthens friendships strongly. In my life up until we were at Uni we would do that. The speed was electric at that period and I have memories of many marathon book reading instances imprinted in my memory for a lifetime. After that with getting involved in our careers and moving from town to town for work somewhere borrowing and exchanging books became difficult. However, even today we connect over those books read together in frenzy after decades have gone by and we have moved away to different corners of the world. Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nadine Gordimer, Rohinton Mistry, V.S. Naipaul, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Amitava Ghosh, Pablo Neruda, Toni Morrison and many many more.

I remember my Mother was a member of a local lending library nearby and they would send around one gentleman with a bag full of books every week. Mother would browse through them and keep two books which she would again return the following week. Her Library Membership Card was pale green in colour with a ledger printed on it which was updated every week by the gentleman carrying the books in the moss green duffle bag. These books with accession number and issue date leaf on the last page next to the back cover would fascinate me to no end. The books also smelled different and looked sometimes quite read many times over. Somehow, to little me it seemed like a mysterious journey from the library to many homes finding it's way to our house. Somehow these books were special than the others. All I longed for was to have a pale green card with an issue date for myself too.

I miss it immensely nowadays, although I am a member of Kindle Unlimited and read quite bit with it but somehow it fails to match the entire trip - to - the - library adventure. For this and to stun us all book lovers recently, China has given the library a new lease of life with the Tianjin Binhai Library in Tianjin,  with 1.2 million books. A great way to promote and increase tourism not to mention readership. There's no conflict here me thinks. 

Tianjin Binhai Library, China

I am hoping countries like India too will think of building more libraries both in the villages and cities along with getting them "smart". The recent Annual State Education Survey Report released just few days back should be taken very seriously in this regard as it paints a very dismal picture about on ground realities. It has covered rural schools in 24 states of India and 40% of the students between the age of 14 to 18  surveyed cannot tell time from the image of clock and 46% couldn't read and understand three out of the four instructions. As many as 57% could not do basic math. The results are alarming and shocking to say the least. I had a short experience with the rolling out of village libraries in my career and every village demanded computers sadly not realizing that it will not serve the cause of learning. We can have classrooms equipped with computers but end of the day if you don't have good teachers there won't be any sparks to enlighten the young minds. A school and a library forms an integral set for learning. I so miss them now. As life gets busy and time is at premium library has become a thing which is so difficult to accommodate in the rush. I would like to change that actually. Wish me luck.

Recently, after ages I went to the Delhi Book Fair. As usual still found it to be as poorly managed as in earlier years. Only the number of people venturing the stalls had surged astronomically. There was near stampede at Ruskin Bond's book launch, 'While the Clouds  Roll By', to get his autograph. India apparently hosts the highest number of literary festivals in the world, so the business must be doing good but we still need some improvement in our organising skill. They are far from desired standards. Overheard at the Oxford Stall, "What is the correct pronunciation for education?" Made me think should we also not ask what is education and how can we improve upon it? So just as 18 brave hearts are felicitated soon on Republic day I am so hoping One Book, One Child by Pratham, a civil society group, becomes a reality in my country sooner than later in 2018.  Wish my fellow countrymen, women and specially all the children a very happy Republic Day. May we keep up with learning by the  enchanting world of books forever.