Reading can add spice to your life

Books never fascinated me. I never inculcated the habit of reading in spite of having a zillion books at my disposal, most of which were gifts from my uncle and aunt in the US and books picked up by my dad. The shelf was full of books which I had never read and later and often ended up being disposed off to cousins, neighbors or the raddiwalas.

But one fine day, maybe about 2- 3 years ago, I just happened to pick up a book my aunt was reading. - The uncommon errors of my life- short stories. I completely enjoyed reading it. Couple of months later, I saw myself walking into the swanky Crossword bookstore in Inorbit Mall, browsing through the fiction section, and this is when I completely amazed myself by spending my first penny on books and chucked away my old belief that buying books were a waste of money. I remember the books I purchased. Picture Perfect- detective stories on which the serial Bymokmesh Bakshi was made. It a great book, I completely enjoyed reading it. The others were Shobha Des books and short stories which were fun to read too. After that my rendezvous with books hasn’t stopped. However some books can leave quite an impression on your mind, or probably change the way you look at things.

Shantaram & Maximum city

After reading Shantaram, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that my perception of looking at Bombay changed; it made me zoom in the dreams, the aspirations, the struggles, the joys of the lakhs of people who make Bombay their home. Today when I look at a slum, my earlier vision of dirt and clutter is taken over by the thought of how the family lives in the little cramped house, what is their lifestyle? What’s their idea of entertainment or eating out? I wonder how life is for them, and how similar it could be to what was described in the book. I wanted to visit Leopold’s and witness all the illegal- legal trades that happen there as mentioned in the book. Whenever I walk through Cuffe Parade and slums there I wonder if any of these people, I pass by are one of the characters from the book. For some reason the chaos and the madness of the trains and the buses, now seem interesting to me.

When I read about the encounters in the newspapers I wonder how true they are compared to the things described in Maximum City. When I read about a movie receiving slags from censor, government etc, I wonder if their struggle to get their movie released is similar to the directors or producer who faced a similar struggle as described in the book. When the court lifted the ban on the dance bars, I thought about the girls who have been described in the book and wonder what their reaction would be to the announcement. Life seems to have become so interesting for me, today when I take a walk down a road I look at the people around trying to figure out the stories of each of their lives. Imagination is such a powerful tool; your imagination can make a street kid’s life also so interesting for you, if you look at all the facets of his life

I don’t know whether it’s my age or it’s the books that have made me too look at the finer details of life that I had completely ignored over the past so many years, definitely adding a lot of spice to everything you do