In recent years, increasingly, I'm never happier than when I am creating my book lists: a list of books (obviously) that I plan to acquire to add to my collection, whether it is the next day, next week, or next month. The pleasure I derive in this activity, and the somewhat pathetic ways in which I attempt to convince myself that I can afford just one more book on the list, or maybe two more, or perhaps even three more, is nothing short of amusing to friends and co-workers, all of whom have to sit through lengthy monologues on my part about why exactly I have picked each book.
If you, my dear reader, have had a chance to peruse my blog, you will have gathered the immense love I feel for the written word. This I have to attribute to both parents. People tell me that my love of books was inherited from my father, who apart from being a vociferous reader, was also an excellent writer. However, it is my mother who cultivated my reading habit. I think the biggest reason I keep buying books at this stage in my life is because when I was younger, we were too poor to be able to do so. Let me quickly add, we weren't characters in a Dickens novel. We simply did not have the disposable income that many families do, to spend on buying books. Instead, my mother took pains to enrol us at the local neighbourhood library wherever we lived. My memories of my childhood are filled to the brim with instances of my mother walking my brother and I to the library to borrow books for the upcoming week. My mother would pick romance novels, thrillers and the occasional management tome. My brother, who my mother hoped would also become a prolific consumer of literature, would pick up as many comics as he was allowed. And I would gather all the Enid Blytons, Sweet Valley Highs and R.L Stines I could. I would also be allowed input on the comics, as I read them alongside my own books. And after about half an hour, the three of us would gather at the checkout counter while my mother rationed out how many we could afford to have each week. As we got older, we were allowed to cycle there without my mother's supervision.
During the summer, when we would spend time with our father, we were able to buy as well as borrow. My mother would allow us to borrow a larger than customary number of books in order to keep us occupied during the day. My father, on the other hand, would buy us books, and comics in the case of my brother, though not too many. Over the years, I devotedly finished reading section after section at my local library, slowing graduating to more complex fare. I was aided by a well curated school library that took pains to collect intelligent and age-appropriate books that challenged a young reader rather than pander to them or patronise them.
Most importantly, my love of reading is also a product of the time that I grew up in. Many, if not all, of my contemporaries and peers also love to read. They continue to do so assiduously, clearly having been converted in their youth. Meanwhile, my younger cousins and co-workers, can hardly be bothered. Most of their reading is restricted to the odd Harry Potter. Most of them believe the Lord of the Rings to be simply a film series. Hardly any of them would trek to South Bombay in the midst of monsoon under the spell and promise of new arrivals at an old-school second hand bookstore. Their loss entirely, I firmly believe.
So here's the thing, I have my next list. I am excited by it. And although I cannot acquire my books (A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht or Bringing Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel) until August, I can spend the next 3 weeks eagerly awaiting the paycheck that I will happily spend on these.
