Skip to main content

A love of books

"Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere."- Mary Schmich

I'm one of those people who always and I mean always has a book in their bag. Whether I'm reading it for the first time, the second time or the 50th time has never mattered to me.

I read at home, in lectures, trains, buses, restaurants, the canteen, the bathroom.

I'm famous for reading anything, anywhere, anyplace, anytime. I've been known to read menus in restaurants for lack of other reading material. I was famous in school for walking down roads and reading books. There was even a rumour that I banged into a BEST bus because I was walking along and reading. Which by the way, is an absolute lie, I was racing along on a bicycle and well... Anyway that's a story for another day.

Books are truly my best friend. I love the way I feel when I walk into a library or a Crossword book store. The sight of all those books renders me speechless and all I want to do just then is start browsing through all the books immediately. To read each and everyone. To pile them up in my arms and take them home with me.

New books or old ones. Doesn't make much of a difference. I love the smell of new books. Of seeing the newly printed words marching across the page. Opening a book and burying my nose in its spine, inhaling that particular scent that only books have and that I'm in love with. Weird I know, but true.

And it's the same with old books. Perhaps even more so with new books. I love scrounging through raddiwala's stores. And all the raddiwalas around my locality and college know me. There's something very special about old books. About wondering who may have owned the book before you. The hands that thumbed through them. Their thoughts and opinions about the book. The inscriptions on the front page- "To Priya, Happy Birthday, With Love from U.Arjun."
The love and joy that those books exude.

I love reading newspapers too. And I read at least 4 a day, 5 if i can squeeze it in. Plus internet news. The Hindustan Times, the Times of India, the Mumbai Mirror and the Mid-Day. The Afternoon Dispatch and Courier as well.

Basically, I love reading. Period.

And that's where I don't understand people who say they don't read. How can you not read? How is that possible?

And I don't get people who don't read even newspapers. It strikes me as incredibly ignorant to not read at all. How can you not what to know what is going on in your world, your country, your city? How hard is it to pick up a newspaper and read? Not very, I'm sure.

And as for people who say, I prefer sleeping to reading. I have nothing at all to say. What kind of justification is that? In what way does sleeping make up for reading. It's not even on par. It just strikes me as incredible laziness.

Reading is a bliss like no other.

If only everybody would realise that.


Comments

Xorkes said…
hey i too love reading.. but not menu´s.. hehehe!
whenevr i´m in bbay, i land up in KINGS for something-anything to read!
PJ said…
hey i agree with you ...books are really addictive....every time i pass by the book stall..near my college....my friends hear me say the same thing (and they tired of hearing it..;))..'i really wish i could own all of these someday...'...i've got this bad habit though of starting to read another book before i've finished one!...the sight of these books drives me nuts!
Tasha said…
Hey, good to hear abt someone who's as crazy as me about books. I never knew how I used to get home from school...

But my love is reading n eating...ppl tell me its bad, but I guess I cn have one vice in life!
Gentle Whispers said…
@ Xorkes: What can I say? I'm cracked in the head. And dont tell me about kings video shop. I used to go there. Sasha(remember her??) thought i had a crush on the son!! :D

@ PJ: Yup, I know how that feels. I seem to spend most of my time in Crosswords. I love that place.

@ Tasha: I empathise totally. Reading and eating. I agree about the eating part. That sure is a vice. But reading? No way! Like it says outside my college library, Reading is an addiction with no side effects.

Popular posts from this blog

Remembering Avanti

Day before yesterday, on the 8th of November 2008, Avanti Desai would have turned 21. Instead 15 days before her birthday, as she hurried home to celebrate her grandmother's birthday, Avanti met with a train accident at Jogeshwari station. Just like that. Gone from our lives forever. Leaving behind a huge void and the world a lot more gloomier. And when I got the call first thing in the morning, I couldn't believe it. I thought it was a cruel sadistic joke, but as the calls kept coming in, I realised it was true. Even at the cemetary,, it still hadn't sunk in that Avanti was no longer here. The worst moment though was watching her disappear into the crematorium, it was horrible and I couldn't believe we were leaving her there, and through the next couple of hours all I could think of was of her going up in smoke while we stood there in the bright sunshine. It seemed incomprehensible at first, to think of Avanti as dead, to talk about her in the past tense, to get

Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal

I watched Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal over the weekend. First day first show in fact and it was fun. A paisa vasool movie if nothing else. Goal absolutely belongs to John Abraham. You cannot take your eyes off him when he's on screen and he does superbly well in a film that doesn't need much histrionics. And his smile. Its just the best. I'm a sucker for nice smiles. The kind where the eyes get all crinkly and his entire face just lights up. Bipasha Basu doesn't have much to do in the film and is incredibly inept at what she does do. She just doesn't come across well. The songs are pretty good. I especially loved Halla Bol. Billo Rani on the other hand is a nonsensical film and would have fitted in better in a movie about UP or Bihar. And how a bunch of footballers who are struggling to pay rent for their club manage to come up with enough money to hire dancers and a vulgar looking singer is beyond me. The movie though doesn't do much for me. The computer animation is

Randomity

I sat here staring at my screen for at least 15 minutes before I could decide what to blog about and as I write this I still have no idea. It's randomness at its best. There are a multitude of thoughts swirling through my head and I'm finding it hart to pinpoint or firmly hold one down. To be precise, what I'm feeling is exactly what Mynie describes in Strings . It's a knotted mess in my head. But I felt that it was time I did a blog post, there have been way too many tags lately and while I love doing tags. It's incredibly cathartic to write a post and get everything off my chest. And while this may seem a mess of a post, there's a lot of stuff that I wanted to talk about but didn't really seem to deserve an entire post to themselves, in terms of content at least. So I'm gonna put them all in here, in what is probably going to turn up to be a hell of a confused post. I'm just going to go with the flow and talk about whatever pops into my head. Cool?