Day 11

Books and the world of wonders they offer me

For as long as I can remember, there were books in my life like there were air and water.

When I was small, it was the hardcover bound colourful fairy tales that my parents bought me whenever we get to visit the big bookstores in the shopping malls in Bangkok. Then there were Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew series in Malay translation which I get to buy every time we went to town when we moved back to Terengganu.

As I started high school and lived in boarding school, what I most looked forward to were the school holidays visits with my mom and brothers to the bookstores in Kota Bharu. These were the tumultuous teenage years, I was reading lot of Malay literatures by Arena Wati, A. Samad Said and award winning novels released by Kumpulan Utusan. Pantai Harapan and Hujan Pagi were my favorites, and in many ways should explain the non-conformist in me.

When I finished high school, while waiting for my SPM results — I bought my first full-fledged adult (not the kind you would think) English non-fiction book. It was Adeline Yen Mah’s Chinese Cinderella, and I never looked back since.

It was one thing feeling connected to the Malay novels I was reading, but discovering the voice in an author who grew up and lived in an entirely different time, era, ways of life, culture and religion knocked the wind out of me.

And suddenly there is this entire world and possibilities waiting to be discovered that I cannot wait to indulge myself i and devour into.

I owe a lot of my life to books — the way it made me think, made me see the world and people in new light.

I am still to this day amazed at how a simple act of writing down your thoughts makes you immortal and gives you the power to touch millions of lives, across centuries, borders and imaginations. I have so many authors to thank for giving my life hundred shades of colours and taking me to places I never thought I would be.

Books made me believe in the impossible. That I can live and shape my life in any ways I want to, much like a storyteller can craft their own stories.

October 9, 2015