The Charm of the Written Word

I am told that it is not that kids of today have completely moved away from books. Somebody I knew had read it somewhere. I hope it is true. For I for one, believe completely in the age old maxim of "Books are a man's best friend".

A lot of what I am today is because of the kind of things that occupied my mind and time during my youth and reading happens to be one of the chief activities that would keep me busy then. And boy, did I love reading? I used to have a voracious appetite for books, ever since I recollect - and this was for all kinds of things readable - books, magazines, newspapers and later e-books etc - I have never discriminated against any medium of readable information. The use of them however was dictated by the availability, weight of the wallet, ease of reading etc at different times.

As a kid, I used to go to my grand-parents's houses regularly during my school vacations - both sets - paternal ones in Patna and the maternal ones, a little yonder, in Bhagalpur. Both my grandfathers had a healthy appetite for books and they, thankfully, transferred their genes on to me, albeit in different ways.

My paternal grandfather would spend hours reading the morning newspaper (in fact, later, when we used to stay with him and I was much elder, there would be a fierce competition in the house regarding the primary possession of the morning newspaper between me, my father and my grand-father !!) and would regale me with stories and events from there and from the works of various other authors, of which he had considerable knowledge. As a kid, the newspaper fascinated me - it seemed to me, a mysterious fount of stories from all around the world - it was through its pages that I learnt of the splendour of Angkor Wat and Borobudur, it was through those pages that a certain Diego Armando Maradona kindled my love for football, it was through them that I first heard words like glasnost and perestroika. In fact, the habit of spending at least sometime in the morning, come what may, going through the pages of the daily newspaper is something that I have strictly adhered to over the years, since I was a 7 year old boy. The sections that aroused my interest have expanded - but the order has remained constant through the years - sports, headlines, world news and then the rest. As a kid growing up in Kolkata, THE STATESMAN was regarded as the finest epitome of the Queen's English and we were asked to go through its editorials religiously in order to improve one's vocabulary and spellings. I am not sure how many of those weighty articles really caught my fancy at that age, but I must say that the sessions have not been in vain.

My maternal grand-father, on the other hand, had bequeathed a fine set of tomes for his descendants, for he was, unfortunately, no longer around when I really began reading earnestly. I hardly have any memories of him that I can draw up, but I owe my interest in a plethora of esoteric subjects completely to his collection of books. On countless afternoons in Bhagalpur, when the rest of the inmates of our house would rest in slumber, I would take apart those weighty tomes - page by page. There was one book especially that I cherished the most - LIVING TOGETHER AS WORLD NEIGHBOURS - Don't remember the author , but I do recall Macmillan as the publisher - but I recall reading with rapt attention the description of the peoples , cultures and histories of the whole world. It used to have lovely photographs of different cities of the world - most of them in B&W - but they seemed to light up the world for you in front of your eyes - the minarets of Kremlin, a long liner passing through the Panama canal, two-humped Bactrian camels loitering in the vast steppes of Central Asia, a Russian family sitting down for breakfast in their traditional Cossack costumes (I still remember, how surprised I was at seeing the quantity of food they had at their breakfast table), students milling around Heidelberg University, regarded as one of the oldest and grandest seats of learning in Europe etc etc. It had also a spectacular set of maps of each continent (in fact, the maps in that book with vast swathes of colonial Africa with names like Belgian Congo, Rhodesia, Nyasaland, U.S.S.R etc would seem perhaps, to be completely from a different planet to a kid of today) and this book was singularly responsible for my keen interest in maps and geography, something that I retain, to this day.

Of course, there has to be constant encouragement from parents and a lot of interest from their side as well before any habit is really ingrained in the children. I have imbibed my love of reading and knowing things - all kinds, all over the world - from my mother (who, having been raised up in small-town Bihar, has never ceased to amaze me with her knowledge of global events and her keen enthusiasm of learning about things even now - guess, my grand-father is to be credited) and my father, who used to spend so much time explaining to me such diverse topics as the structure of the United Nations, stories of different wars, dictators etc.

Kids today have a much larger and mind-boggling variety of entertainment options to choose from. I am not sure whether the Famous Fives, Secret Sevens, Enid Blytons etc form part of the consideration set of kids these days. But I hope that they do - books maketh a man. Very true.