Penguin India recently came out with a lovely selection of merchandise to mark the 25th anniversary of its operations in the country. The moment the publishing house posted details (and some pictures) of its merchandise – ranging from notebooks to key chains to baggage tags to coffee mugs to cloth bags on Facebook, I began to get restless with desire – I so wanted to grab them all. I dreamt that Penguin would make life as easy as they could for me – yes, I conveniently assumed that all their merchandise would be available online. But, much to my disappointment, it was not to be – at least then. I learnt that the stuff could be bought only at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Yes, yes, I sat and drooled like a typical bookworm, looking at the JLF website, around the same time that Penguin announced its merchandise – but I had only dreamt of visiting the JLF but not planned it. The merchandise, thus, eluded me with a firmer hand.
So, you can imagine my surprise and delight (I use those words just to sound sober and sane), when I walked into one of the Landmark stores in Madras to discover that they had displayed all the merchandise alluringly on a separate table. I spent a good half an hour there (only at that table), picking and choosing and taking important decisions. And no, I am not even going to tell you how much and what all I picked, or give you a chance to take a peek at how mad I can get at times when it comes to books and all things bookish.
Let’s just say it all went well, the purchasing and all. So, now, jumping a good five weeks from then, I can tell you that I have planned and executed the placement of some of those merchandise around my writing table and have chosen the keys that would go with the coveted key chain. The only thing that I didn’t know how to put to best use was the cloth bag. Carrying the words, ‘A Suitable Bag’, modelled on Vikram Seth’s ‘A Suitable Boy’, this orange bag, ironically, didn’t find a suitable place. Well, nobody really displays bags, but, since this happens to be a special bag and I happen to be a crazy book addict, it’s obvious that I want to flaunt it inside the house too, when I am not going outside. So, one fine day, as I was sitting at my writing table, and gazing at my bookshelf to take my eyes off the laptop for a while, the knobs of the bookshelf’s glass door caught my eye. And well, I don’t care if you are giving me those stares, but yes, I hung the bag from the knob and it looks super cool.
What’s there inside the bag now, is an easy guess – as easy as finishing a pack of potato chips (the statement made on a feasible assumption that the love for potato chips is universal). To get to the point, yes, there are two books inside it right now, Lionel Shriver’s ‘Double Fault’ and Pradeep Sebastian’s ‘The Groaning Bookshelf’ – ones that I hope to read over the next few days. So, the bag does serve the exaggerated purpose assigned to it by its creative owner.
There you see it – the truth. I think it’s fairly obvious. Books complete me. I feel from the bottom of my heart that they are a pleasure to live with. If you throw me into a party or a get-together where I know nobody, but spare me a good book, I can get through the party flipping pages or doing at least one or more or all of these – smelling the pages, running my fingers over the paper, admiring or hating the font, loving or loathing the cover, and of course reading it. If there is no book, I can survive with a discussion about books. It’s one of the few things I can have a meaningful conversation about. Ok, I have never been in such a crisis situation, so to speak, I mean, getting thrown into an unknown party – but you get the picture right?
My childhood was spent amid books, like many kids. My father ensured that we had a good collection of classics – it was a thing of pride then (and still is perhaps!) to flaunt an enviable collection of classic literary writing from across the world – works by Dickens, O Henry, Austen, Bronte Sisters, Kipling, Stevenson, Melville, Nesbit, Dumas, Verne, Hugo – they were all stuffed into one of the cupboards in our home. We never really had a bookshelf back then. Indian writing collection, as far as I can remember, was not as flamboyant as it is today – R.K.Narayan’s books and works of Jawaharlal Nehru are some that I can recall. Of course, Nancy Drew and Perry Mason were read during summer vacations with copies picked up from a local library. And then, there were those bound collections of Disney comics that were priced Rs.2/- per issue!
Yet, the real reader inside me or the reading taste that I possess today, now that I look back, was unleashed when I began working in Bombay. I used to walk down to the Oxford Bookstore in Colaba during weekends and sometimes even during late evenings on weekdays. I loved walking down alone especially when there was a drizzle and the air was cool. Marry that to the expectations of sifting through books and picking something that appeals to you – these thoughts are your only company as you walk in the rain. Poetic, isn’t it? Well, it really is. And it’s one of those very few sublime, soulful experiences that have given me what I can record as priceless moments of my life. It was something I looked forward to so much, that thinking of it even now, that veritable excitement that I used to feel back then returns unpretentiously. I began building my book collection from then on.
Adding to the joy was the time I had at my disposal, travelling by the local train from Churchgate to Lower Parel in the mornings and vice-versa during evenings. I was lucky to travel against the crowd – that I always had the comfort of finding a seat in the local train and enough breathing space. I would get into the train, clutching a book in my hand. I loved reading in the train both ways, during lunch breaks at work and late into the night in the hostel. There were times when I used to read like I had nothing else to do in this world. I don’t remember reading with as much zest when I was at college, or even when I worked in a software firm. The true reader was born when the writer in me was revealed and polished, and that was when I chose to study journalism and later on, went to Bombay to work as a financial writer. Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Remains of the Day’, Vikram Seth’s ‘An Equal Music’, Gregory David Roberts’ ‘Shantaram’, Jean Sasson’s ‘Princess’ were some of the books that I read during this period.
When I got married, I brought with me a set of 60 books that was published by Penguin (global) on the eve of its 60th birthday, back in 1997 and that my dad had purchased with great enthusiasm. It was a brilliant thing to watch, this collection as it was unveiled for the first time by my father – sixty little books, stuck to each other, looking up and beaming at us with their tiny orange spines from the brown box they were packed in. I still have all of them with me.
Today, I have a bookshelf that is full. Quite literally. I must say that it has been a very cooperative one – this piece of furniture, which was one of the first few gifts from my husband. With every book I buy, I hope I will find the space within this shelf and it hasn’t failed me thus far. It accepts heartily every little book that comes its way and within its wooden and glassy confines preserves many, many worlds created by a melange of words and also the peerless smell of printed books. Every time I open the shelf, this smell is what turns out to be my first temptation. It lures me to enter a world of a million possibilities and endless dreams. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry and graphic novels – they are all there. I choose, I buy – driven by instinct, reviews, cover designs, prize lists and well-worded first five pages. Sometimes I regret choices and pretend to learn, but most times, I love what I read. And I must say I have a tough time deciding what to throw out.
I buy books and also mentally chalk plans on how to read it tastefully. And so I build those little extras too – like a regular reading lamp and a tiny reading lamp that can be clipped to the pages of a book. And a tasteful assortment of bookmarks.
Now, did I say that I have a whole variety of bookmarks? From the ones Flipkart sends generously with every book that I order to the ones I have picked up from all the bookstores that I have gone to, to an autographed one to the ones made of handmade paper to one that’s made of metal to a cloth-based one that Sister got from Turkey? No, don’t even get me started! Let’s have that for another day. For when it comes to books, I can never stop talking. And writing. For, books, complete me.
Picture by Rach under CC license