All about Reading ....

Why do we read? It’s pretty difficult question, isn’t it?

When someone first asked me this question, it made me numb. I replied it with the very first thought that came to my mind. I replied that I read because books make me feel good(no clue, why i said that :)), I fully utilize my travel time to office (thanks to this city’s growing traffic, it takes some times 3 hours up and down to cover a 5 KM journey ) and books/news paper keeps me updated about the universe.

I don’t know how satisfied was the gentleman with that reply but it came out with vivid lucidity that I was not. It’s too vital a question for every reader to ignore.

It made me to walk again the path of my Childhood. It would have been either Nandan or Chanpak(Hindi comic books,used to be available at every U.P. state bus stop book stores) which would have caught my attention first. The pictures and stories of Nandan/Chankap vaan were so innocent that any kid would like to submerge into it. It slowly became a passion.

Life without Pran’s Chacha Chaudhri in those day where unfathomable. It were not merely simple funny stories which held the attention but also the hilarious pictures which made me spell bound.( To illustrate, how many times we see a man slipping with a sound “Phisalna” or bomb exploding with a sound “Dhamaka”. I sluggishly remember bugging my sisters and brother to narrate those stories while I used to look at those astounding pictures. Indeed Chacha Chaudhri (Note: with a brain faster than a computer) and Sabu (Note: He was from Jupiter planet) played vital role in my literary journey.)

This journey without mention of Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv, Parmadu, hilarious Bankelal and action man Bhokal would not be complete. These books were fabulous medium to kill the boredom created by books of mathematics tables, science water purification chapters, cramming Australia’s geography and national animal’s etcetera. Audacity to read Chacha Chaudhri in civics class by keeping it between the civics books still spreads impish smile on my face.

But slowly these books got disappeared from my book racks and were replaced by O.P. Agrawal’s Mathematics and J.D. Lee’s non organic Chemistry. It was a hard time but Swed Marten gave the courage to overcome it, and kept that flickering light alive.

Then I laid my hand on a books which put me on the cross roads of a strange journey. It left an unfathomed impression on my conscious mind. Whichever new book I started in those days, it used to end with ‘The Fountainhead’. The Objectivism was initially hard to swallow but slowly Objectivism will swallow you.

‘Siddhartha’ and ‘Auto biography of a Yogi’ came on the way to enlighten this journey.

But now I’m addicted to it. When I am writing this blog and look over my book shelf, I see Sense and Sensibility, the Wealth of Nations, Strange Pilgrims, Of Love and Other Dreams, iCon which gives me an ambivalent feeling. Ironically this adds one more question ‘What am I reading?’ in addition to my previous question. I’m still unanswerable to these questions.

Perhaps it’s intellectual famishment which I am feeding with these books. But it creates a mirage and makes me reading many more in a hope that someday it would sooth this hunger.