My Book Reading Lifecycle

When I started out, I used to ‘yearn’ for books. I thought buying any other than textbooks would be sinful, so I treasured any catalog of books which I could lay my hands on. The little snapshots of books’ cover-pages fascinated me beyond anything! Mostly I retrieved old books; read and forgotten ones starting from our grandfather’s time. I ‘read’ as many books as reached me, mostly of Hindi literary legends at that stage. Later I became ‘borrower’ of books, when I started borrowing from our office libraries – often at the rate of two every week. I would also ‘record’ the names of those I finished, along with some wonderful quotes. For some years I became 'trafficker' of books; when I bought those in bulk from near Churchgate. Then twice I could claim to be ‘author’ of books; at least portions of those specks in the ocean. All along I never noticed when I became ‘hoarder’ of books – I would buy due to sheer pleasure of owning those books… As I grew with age, I also flirted with being ‘unbeliever’ in books – since reading those gave a false feeling of ‘know it all’ while the key lied somewhere else. But all through the lifecycle of my ‘business’ with books, I guess one thing has survived which is the ‘love’ for books. Currently I am loving one from Arun Shourie, which I bought to own but now it owns my time and imagination.

– Reading “The Only fatherland: communists, "Quit India", and the Soviet Union”