The Cosmic Pull of Books from the Library

I revelled in my fantasy of ‘ruling’ the library all by myself for a number of days after that. Reimagining how I practically ‘lived’ right inside the library, where the magical books floated around me making me ‘feel comfortable’, handing me my favourite foods & milkshakes, while I made merry by simply pointing a finger at a book and the doors of the bookcase would magically open and the book would float across the room & land in my hands. I could feel the touch & smell the rich paper, and read the book through smoothly by simply glancing over the pages and I could absorb it all and visualise the text like a movie in my mind. This went on for a few days, before I felt the pangs to go back to the ‘magic library’. But then the face of the librarian would crop up & warn me ‘if I touched any bookcase, forget about touching any books at all’!

But then something within me felt anew. Like a flame had been lit. And I was raring to go visit the library and eager to scan the other books I had laid my eyes on. Books whose titles I had heard other kids talk about excitedly at school & the neighbourhood. Then I recalled the conversation between the librarian and his senior, about the handover of duty by someone else to him. That meant there was someone else manning the library at a different time. So I asked for my father’s help with checking the schedule of the library and the ‘change of guard’, while also requesting him to make himself a member of the library so I could avail the facility as a ‘dependant’. All he needed to do was to fill a membership application form and once approved he would be issued a membership card, along with similar cards for family members who would use the facility. Family members are typically known as ‘dependants’.

And within the month I found myself back at my favourite new place – The Library 

This time, I took care of exploring the sections ‘permitted’ for kids to browse and borrow from – Fiction. There was a wide range of authors to choose from. And I went about picking the ones whose covers appealed to me. Next step was reading the summary on the back cover of each book. In some books there was a brief intro about the author given on the inside of the back or front covers or both. This gave me an idea of what would I want to spend my time reading. And the ‘action’ genre appealed to me, without a doubt. The trial began and I found myself borrowing ‘a book a week’. In about a month or two I had built a list of my favourites. Top of the line for me were – Desmond Bagley, Robert Ludlum, John Grisham, Jeffrey Archer, Frederick Forsyth, and last but not the least Wilbur Smith.

I enjoyed experiencing the different sentiments that emerged from the different writing styles of each author. But the common thread pretty much remained the same. Action. The different styles of narration appealed to me the most as I could then ‘look forward’ to experiencing a certain kind of thrill when I picked up a particular author’s book, knowing well that the book held the promise of that thrill. You could say I developed a liking for an author based on the predictability of the nature & level of challenge I could expect from the story. This went on for quite some time. Till exams loomed over the horizon and I had to park aside all my ‘hobbies’ to focus on my studies. Well, it was only for a few days till the exams lasted. After that I was to get back to my favourite pastime. That knowledge helped me tide over the exam-fever comfortably.

Fact is, by then I realised it wasn’t just another pastime for me. I realised that I was learning quite a few things from the books I read. Things that would otherwise emerge in one’s consciousness only if experienced first-hand. This realisation seamlessly matched the well-known adage I came across much later in life. “With reading one can travel the whole world without moving an inch”. With reading I could not only travel locations around the world that otherwise I could only dream of (still do), but I could learn from the wisdom derived from someone else’s experiences. Again, that too would ideally happen only if you know as many people in real life and get to converse with them comfortably & regularly in order to acquire that wisdom. Reading gives you the advantage of ‘spreading your knowledge-wings’ far & wide as you learn from other people’s experiences.

This was all happening at an age when the reading was not only giving wings to my existing interests but also helping me discover new things in life that led to building new interests. Although not all information would be available on anything that appealed to me (or with as much clarity as one would want it to be), it would be enough to spark my curiosity about something I learnt for the first time. This would prompt me to explore more information about the subject from sources that would hold elaborate records on same. And that led me to pursue those interests as & when I found more information on them. Let me share some examples here. Exceptionally different vocations that were available out there. Relationships and Roles played by each person depending on the position they held in the relationship. Business success stories intrigued me in my College/MBA years and continue to do so even today. Connections between an individual, families, neighbourhoods, society, community, states, country, between countries, between humans and animals, humans & the ecology around us across the planet Earth, etc. You get the hang of it?

For a school-boy this was all a wealth of information to learn from about realities of life and at the same time be able to correlate them all to the life I was experiencing myself. Like acts of violence were considered criminal except when done ‘for the larger good’, like the Police protecting citizens or the Armed Forces protecting the country. The world of Spies intrigued me a lot. I’ve always loved solving puzzles and a spy’s lifestyle seemed quite like a puzzle to me. Filled with a wide variety of complex objectives, cluttered with an unusual mix of challenges, and an even more surprising range of lucky escapes!

Understand that this was around the turn of the last decade of the last century – late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Internet was yet to break ground. Mobiles were nowhere in our wildest dreams either. These were found in the subjects of sci-fi novels. Or part of the espionage tool-kit of an ultra-secret-agent operating across continents with a range of passports and a magical access to cash in similar range of currencies. Not to mention the high-tech weaponry built by a mad scientist at a secret base found in the basement of some secret, nondescript government building. The sheer scale of imagination. This was beyond comics & super-heroes. The experience was ‘out-of-the-world’. Definitely an entirely different shade from the Classics. And reading books was the only mode to absorbing these stories. And my only source of these books was – The Library.

And the best part? There was a whole range of authors who were exceptionally good at this genre of storytelling. Magicians who wove magic with their plots & storylines & characters & the numerous twists & turns making it all seem like a ‘personal journey’ to you as you turned every page, rarely wondering how this is all going to end. And when you did reach the final page of the book, you were left with a fleeting trailer of a possible ‘continuance’ of the story with an altogether new plot, set in a mysterious new location. And that gave you respite from the pain you felt while closing the last page of the thriller. Respite that you could look forward to a ‘sequel’ to the brilliant journey you just experienced. And that was enough to keep your hopes up, waiting for the next release.

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