read on

Posted on 9/24/2005 Post Comment -

Ages ago, as a child, it used to be my greatest pleasure to race up to the attic room of a cousin's house whenever we visited Thrissur and bury myself among a fantastic collection of books. I still remember some of  them, especially one in which a small boy took a ride atop a butterfly to learn about the life of butterflies and another one in which two children suddenly found themselves transformed into ants and thus able to explore the secrets of an ant-hill.

   Then, there were those sets of 12 volumes, brought out every year by the now defunct Sahitya Pravarthaka Sahakarana Sangham, the first writers cooperative to be formed, I think, in the world or if not, at least in Kerala.

   These volumes offered a variety of topics including poetry, of course in Malayalam, my mothertongue. In one of  those, a little boy gets an interactive session, through dreams, with different organs of the body.

   I graduated into English with Enid Blyton. Despite all allegations of racist bias in her books, which I came to know only much later, I enjoyed the mysteries and adventures. Then of course, becoming interested in aviation, became a fan of Biggles.

   Having got access to good libraries at school, college as well as at the American Center and British council, a new world of books opened up. I even read English books at Max Mueller Bhavan where one could get accounts of the second world war from German writers. One fantastic book was a journalist's account of life on board a U-boat with rather irreverent observations about Hitler. There were also books by one Hans Haas, who started out by harpooning fish underwater in the sea and ended up becoming one of the pioneering underwater photographers. Thus managed to get authentic information about behaviour of sharks much much before "Jaws".

   Nothing like a good read for me, anytime, any place.