The Status and Origins of a 25 Year Old Hobby
I love reading stories, it’s a family thing
To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. Thoreau
The Only Passion of My Childhood
I had my face buried in storybooks most of my childhood. By the end of school years I had read volumes of works of quite a few modern and contemporary authors of my place. Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Narayan Debnath, Sukumar Ray, Narayan Gangopadhyay, Ashapoorna Devi, Suneel Gangopadhyay, Lila Majumdar, and Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay come to the top of my mind. I remember falling so deep in love with Bibhutibhushan’s Aranyak when I read it for the first time, I resolved not to read it ever again. I also pored over few masterpieces of the famed authors from places utterly foreign and fantastical to me. I admired Sherlock Holmes so much that I started learning how to play violin, which is, till date, the most exquisite item I own.
Sidelined by Netflix etc.
I read only a handful of good books during my grad years. I recall reading Treasure Island, Little Women, Tom Sawyer, Poirot and And Then There Were None during one summer break. I remember crying inconsolably over Khaled Hosseini’s books another summer. Many of my classmates, esp. the core IT peeps had laptops on which we would binge on cool movies and the occasional epic series through much of our four glorious, carefree years. Many cherished memories spring up from the movie nights I had with my girlfriends at our hostel. So I didn’t really miss reading during those years.
The formal opportunity and real convenience of watching a movie or series on my own laptop presented itself when I was studying for my Master’s degree. During those two years, I doubt I read even ten good books. I recall reading Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, and my first novella, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. I often missed my old habit of serene, focused reading, but I chose to groom my newer habit of watching stories during any spare time.
When I started going to the office, the cherished hobby of my childhood took an absolute backseat. Even when I could carve out some time for reading an actual, physical book, I usually found myself squinting at professional development preachings (think of Ten Ways To XYZ), and not at any real, good storybook. I’m unsure what had transpired in those years. But I remember really missing the thrill of a great reading session. Which in my experience occurs only when the deliberate reader in me pores over a heartfelt message by the stranger who’s soon to become my confidant.
I’m Back at It Now
I broke out of the rut with two very different books, both of which I picked up recently in the past one and half years. Books of magic. Carl Sagan’s epic tale of our existence, Cosmos (one of my top recommendations to friends who haven’t read it yet), and Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s psychological thriller, The Angel’s Game.
I kept going, and read The Namesake and Ray Bradbury’s works for the first time. I re-read The Order of Phoenix and Angels and Demons for the third and sixth time consecutively as per an old, yearly ritual. One day I went to a bookstore and acquired a formidable stack on a whim. That purchase included James Gleick’s Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic Dune, and a random bunch of contemporary fiction, like Haruki Murakami’s Birthday Girl and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s stories.
A Special Mention
I actually chose another book for its cover during that trip to the bookstore.
It happened to glimmer amidst the rows of other paperbacks. I picked it out, the last available copy, and read the gushing ovations inscribed on its first page. I was sold at The Atlantic’s cool confession, “We laugh in self-defense.” Months later, I was not disappointed.
Once I had read this peculiar book enough to know who it is I’m dealing with, I also found myself laughing in self-defense. I owe much of my recent curation of transformative, bold ideas to the venerable American counterculture icon, Kurt Vonnegut.
This should teach me something about choosing a book by its cover, I am sure.
Right now I’m reading some of my new favourites — Thoreau’s essays, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, and unread bits of Palm Sunday. Since I joined Medium two months ago, I have read a good number of top-notch journalism and thought-provoking opinion pieces by accomplished authors and newbie writers. To write sensibly, I have to resort to thorough literature review, which in turn pushes me to read varied works of both modern and contemporary creatives.
In a nutshell, I have picked up my childhood hobby solidly once again, after a rough decade of neglect.
The Origins: Who Taught Me To Read?
It’s my grandfather’s legacy.
He cherished each book his two bright daughters won as prizes in school (each the topper of her own class every year, for twelve straight years). He also brought all those books with him to Calcutta in 1997, where he had built a home for his retirement years.
I’ve seen his scribbles, and him scribbling on the pages he often thumbed. The legends of Mahabharata and Ramayana, particularly the philosophy of Bhagavad Gita, the extensive works of Rabindranath Tagore, and stacks of other seminal works by progressive thinkers and activists and artists of good and great renown of his time.
Now I only remember him fondly as a gentle, luminous presence with almost always a book nesting in his hands. This was his favourite hobby, reading the fantastic truth in many forms through the confessions and revelations of brave artists, who are, of course, master storytellers.
I owe a momentous piece of who I am to my remarkable grandfather. I suspect that I’ll never really be able to repay the debt, or convey my earnest gratitude to him for the way he showed me through his choice of a simple, singular hobby.
I plan to keep his legacy intact.
Counter Arts is home to eclectic articles by cultivated eccentrics. It’s sensible and it’s fun!
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I must thank Hermione Wilds Writes for helping me finetune this essay!
