What was your first love?
In my teens, I often wondered why they say “fall in love” and not “rise in love.” Then, I did not have Google at my fingertips to provide the answer. Now I know better. The heady mix of oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin creates the kick that gives the feeling of lightheadedness. This intoxication is compared to the weightlessness, which is often felt when falling under the effect of gravity — hence the similarity to “falling” in love.
A throwback to those adolescent years of raging hormones reminds me of the myriad crushes which I had — which would appear and disappear at will and I was at a loss to stay focused on one. It ranged from the senior in my school, the boy next door, the physics teacher in my college, the young doctor who joined as my father’s trainee to Shahrukh Khan, Hugh Grant, MS Dhoni, and Jonty Rhodes. The list was endless. There were a few flings, some flirtations, and one heartbreak. But I managed to get over it pretty fast. With people, I fell in and out of love so quickly that I cannot claim any one of them as my first love (no disrespect to any of them; I was the restless one).
My first love was not a person. It was a thing. It was books. For the life of me, I cannot remember how I got hooked on them, but I loved delving into the realms of tsars and tsarinas, faraway castles and quaint villages, monsters and minotaur, witches and Baba Yaga, epics and myths, boons and curses, a beautiful princess and a handsome prince, of long ago and happily ever afters. In that kindergarten bookish world, good always triumphed over evil and I was happy with Cinderella and Snow White who, unlike my real-life flesh and blood friends, never slighted or bullied me.
As I grew up, I moved from fairy tales to Enid Blyton, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, and followed them around while the amateur sleuths solved crimes and mysteries. When Nancy Drew got locked in a room or Barney was trapped in a cave with Miranda, it was heart-stopping. When the story reached such a point, I often wondered what I would do if I were in their situation. The pages turned and I had to know how the story ended. I devoured the books so fast that I was miffed the school library did not allow us more than 1 book per week. The annual book fairs were a lifesaver. I never returned home without at least a dozen vowing that I would read them slowly. But I don’t think they ever lasted beyond a month.
So I started re-reading them. My mother could never understand how I had the patience for multiple reads and each time, laugh at the pranks played by Snubby and Loony. When I was 12, I was gifted the Ramayana and Mahabharata by C. Rajagopalachari. I read them so frequently that the spines cracked, and the pages fell apart. And so was the case with Little Lord Fauntleroy and Heidi. I accompanied Remy (Nobody’s Child), Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield through all the hardships they bore in their young lives. When a desperate David Copperfield, travel-worn and looking like a ragamuffin approaches Miss Betsy for the first time and softly touches her arm and says,” Please aunt! I am your nephew.” — I could not hold back my tears. It was as if all his pent-up emotions on losing his mother, his home, and his childhood came crashing down on me in that one sentence.
As my tryst with books went on unabashedly, one fine day I met the Bennet family. They charmed me with their wit, humour, playfulness, beauty, liveliness, and togetherness. This book was an eye-opener on various planes. Lizzy’s strong belief in marrying for love or not marrying at all resonated with me forever. I will never forget those lines of Mr. Bennet, “My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life.” And that is real. It's heaven to marry for love, but the love will soon fizzle out if it is not built on the platform of mutual respect. The book depicted the struggles of parents who have daughters as the only thought in their mind is getting them married — since marriage provided security — a thing which is still a stigma today in many parts of the world. The book celebrates friendship from 2 different angles — one between Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy who remained staunch throughout, and the other between Elizabeth and Charlotte Lucas who waded through rough waters after Charlotte’s decision to marry for logic ignoring love.
But above and all it was a book that first stirred in me the notion of what love should be like. The love which Darcy felt for Elizabeth — slow and compelling though made difficult due to social differences yet unbending despite rejection and resistance — was the kind of love I decided I would settle for. Mr. Darcy’s first proposal was romantic enough, but I set great store with the second one. Who can forget those lines, “You’re too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged. But one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”
Once I moved away to college, I happened to borrow some Mills and Boon reading material from a few friends. Needless to say, they were a revelation of their own. The first time I read them, my eyes popped out of my sockets. It was a nouveau encounter for me — purebred romantic fiction with flawless lead characters, their engaging and violent lust and attraction with vivid descriptions of lovemaking enough to set the brain on fire. During this phase, someone lent me, “If Tomorrow Comes” and there I was — once again swept by the deluge called Sidney Sheldon. Jeffrey Archer, Robin Cook, and Stephen King followed suit.
With years, I started delving into more mature reading — The Book Thief, The Kite Runner, The Good Earth, The Lowland, and The God of Small Things — each of them carried a different passion. The intricacies of the human mind, their imperfections, their tribulations and triumphs, and the tangled webs of thoughts involving shame, guilt, passion, love, anger, repression, hatred, and exultation were all lain bare. Each in its own way has made me wonder how complicated and simple we can be at the same time. And there I was while trying to really act my age by being more selective in my reading, along came Harry Potter and his friends to stupefy me.
Irrespective of the genre, books are my haven. I have always been an introvert and books opened a world where I felt safe, where I could not be bullied, blamed, or judged. While I do endeavor to talk to new people and try various ice-breaking tips (again taken from books), given a chance I would gladly prefer to curl up with a book. They have been my constant companion all these years and while I have lost touch with people (again due to poor networking skills), I find myself always going back to my books. Right now I am on my >10th time reading Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows and I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.
