I picked up an old issue of Reader's Digest while sorting out a bookshelf this morning. The very first article I chose to read was about a family's immense love for books- so much so that they were facing severe space crunches,trying to accommodate a few hundred new books (they actually love reading their books). Though I do not relate to their problem, as of now, I can identify with their fondness for books which they lovingly refer to as 'family'.
My earliest memory of books is of big, fat, musty volumes filling up the bookshelves in my parents' modest apartment - the standard RABINDRA RACHANABALI, SHARAT RACHANABALI, BANKIM RACHANABALI,SHARADINDU-S AND SUNIL GANGOPADHYAY-S, with a few English classics (old Penguin editions) thrown in for good measure. What amazed me as a child was the huge number of gargantuan medical texts (my father and brother are doctors) that lay piled up on my brother's bed and on our living room couch during weekdays when my brother would be away. This meant that when guests visited, I had to jump into action, pronto, taking the books off the couch and onto my bed. There were strict instructions not to keep the books on the floor for that would mean heresy, tantamount to a violation of the House of God.
I do not remember the first book I read all by myself for pleasure but by age ten, I got used to the fact that they would be the only kind of gifts my father would buy for me. Soon I became a voracious reader, only too willing to wolf down a smorgasboard of delectable tales, whenever served. From AAM AANTIR BHEPUand CHAANDER PAANHAR to FAMOUS FIVEs and LITTLE WOMEN, it was a journey undertaken for sheer delight. Without my realizing, Apu, Durga, Julian, George, Jo and Beth had become my best friends, my only friends. Don't feel sorry for me on this account for I feel a bond with them that has lasted over the years, a bond that, I am not sorry to say, has outdone many others in loyalty. It would be unfair if I do not mention here a certain Mr. D. Sen, bookseller, who gave me new books on the sly, not taking a penny but only the promise that I would return them in impeccable condition after having read them. Or my high school English teacher, Mrs. Una Jones who catered to my unusually large appetite for books from her personal collection. From my adolescence to adulthood, books have found new friends for me. Happy exchanges of books with classmates during recesses at school left me enlightened and richer without my having to spend a rupee. I recall how intensely and desperately we kept looking for Heathcliff in real life for years and how it crushed our souls to know that Heathcliff and we were better off in our separate worlds. I recall how we discussed our waiting to lay our hands on 'Lolita' - a forbidden fruit in our teens. I remember raging debates in college over the aptness of the decision to give Arundhati Roy the Booker, debates about who was the better writer -Saramago or Coetzee, about who had more enduring appeal - Holmes, Poirot or Feluda. I have lost touch with so many of my friends from those years but I feel connected whenever I go through the books that had brought us together.
During my final year in college, a very dear Professor had invited some of us to her house. The lasting impression of that visit that I brought back home was of her huge library, overflowing with hardbound classics and paperbound pulp. I made a decision that day. I didn't know who I would eventually become or what I would do in life but I would most certainly and lovingly set up a personal library at home. I have managed to do that, buying, reading and preserving books over the years with a gusto that I rarely show for any other activity.I too love my books like 'family', I get paranoid when I have to lend them, I leaf through them ever so delicately, they act as touch-therapists when I am under the weather and I promise them ever so often that they will have new companions in new bookshelves. I have revisited many of them a number of times and I am happy to say that they have not tired me. No wonder then that I have not taken to e-books that don't quite seem made for personal use and collection.
Meanwhile, my father continues to buy books for me and I can never thank him enough for the best gifts ever.
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2 comments:
How did I miss this post, Mithu? And you're so right - I relate to it completely - hell, I could have been reading about my own childhood. Book fairs were family outings for me too - and no, my parents never refused me books either. In fact, my dad would always stop at some bookstore to buy me a book whenever he returned home after night-duty (he used to be a journalist; now he's retired from journalism, and writes children's fiction), which I would find by my pillow when I woke up, invariably late, on holidays.
I wish you and I had studied in the same section during our childhood - I'd have loved to have discussed the books I was reading with someone as passionate about them as I was. I know just what you mean about them being 'family' - nothing can comfort me more than a good, trusted book when I'm ill or unhappy. And I don't remember ever being lonely, despite being an only child - books were my constant companions. And my cats!
And yes, I too have managed to build up a personal library - due largely in part, I have to admit, to my husband, who already had a huge collection when we got married, and it's only grown since!
Thanks for popping over. I had a feeling too that you might enjoy this post :)
Reading it once again reminded me of 'Poila Baishakh-s' during my childhood. Till date my father has not stopped buying books on the first day of the Bangla calender, despite my mother's futile protests about space being eaten up. I love my old man for this!
And yes, I wish we were in the same section at school too. We have to make up for it once i return :D
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