Books (of course!)

My reading taste is eclectic: fiction, thrillers, non fiction, essays

This is just one of the many photos that captures my personal book collection. I have always loved to read, starting from the time when my father (who helped my grand-father run a book shop in Imphal's Paona Bazaar) would bring home one comic a day. My father would bring home a Tinkle comic or an Amar Chitra Katha title or one from the Chandamama series or an Indrajal comic. Rather than play during school break, I would pester the school librarian to give me books to read. My grand father had this to say about me to someone: 'she loves the written word and started out reading from words on carton boxes and labelled tins, all the while asking what the words meant'.
A friend tried to give her own two cents on why I love reading, "You don't love to read actually, it is just a refuge." This was after I told her that right from growing up times, I opted for reading, more than playing with friends or hanging out with them. One day she asked what I was reading for the day and I happened to tell her that I was trying to choose between an essay series by Edward Said and the latest thriller. She asked me if I could really digest Said. Thankfully for me, that friend is out of my life! I don't really care to have my love for reading all psycho analyzed or to have my reading abilities questioned :D
I started out my book buying from college days (in Chandigarh) though it wasn't' much. Once I came back to Imphal, I found that there were only a few book shops here and ones that only had Mills and Boons romances and the usual fare of Sidney Sheldon, Jefferey Archer, Danielle Steele and others of that ilk. But thanks to friends who know of my love for books and get them for me without asking/with asking, my collection have grown. It also helps that online shopping stores ship till Imphal. Yet, for all the attractions of picking out books from online stores, paying them online and having them shipped free of cost with great discounts to boot; I find that stepping into a book store is the most profound and sublime experience for me. The charm of feeling the pages of a book and reading bits and pieces of the pages in between is something that an online book buying experience cannot give me. Happily for me, I have made the most out of my situation. Whenever I get out of Manipur and I go for shopping, I drop into book stores and browse to my heart's content and then I flip through pages and take down the names of books. Then I order online!

All from one person, who has given me 20 odd books!

Every book in my collection has a story of its own apart from what the book contains within. Each book that I have selected from different book stores brings me memories of furrowing my head over which books to buy and which not to. They take me to the exact time and moment when I chose them while shaking my head sadly at the books I would have loved to add to my collection but could not (budgetting!). Each book that has been given to me by a dear friend makes me recollect the delight and happiness that I have experienced when they gave those books to me. They tell me that I have been blessed to have people who care enough to call me and say 'give me your list of books you want to read and I will get them for you'.
There can be nothing better than swapping book lists and authors to check out. Books are great conversation starters too. I normally don't walk up to people I have just met but if I see a total stranger reading a book that piques my interest, I ask over the book!Just recently, I was taking two flights: one from Imphal to Guwahati and then Guwahati-Aizawl .Yes! in case you don't know, Aizawl in Mizoram is a next door neighbor but sometimes one has to take round about route to get there (that begs for another blog entry on travelling in the North East part of the country). To come back to the matter of the book anecdote, I had 3 hours in between flights and so took along a book to read. The Imphal-Guwahati flight is a mere 35-40 minute route but I still took out the book I was carrying. Seeing me read, my co-passenger took out a book too. Call it co-incidence but the book he had with him was 'A strange man' by Ishmat Chughtai (not that there was anything strange about the elderly gentleman!) and it led to a conversation over books, mutual people we knew courtesy of the six degree of separation and then books again. It felt like we had known each other for years...
I have many friends who read and not all of us have the same taste in books but there are two books that I keep recommending to folks whose reading taste may or may not be the same as me: The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller and The Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur. The former is a short searing love story while the later is one major laugh riot. I end up recommending both to people who want to read books but don't have enough time to read longish ones.