I was quite a bookish freak before. By before I mean when I hadn't yet been slobbered up the technicalities of routine life, when I didn't even realise the irony of the phrase 'routine life'.
My city used to host a huge international book fair every year, and that would be the one time of the year I would be trully happy. The kind of happiness that makes you giddy and makes you want to throw up just so that you have some way to let that happiness out of you.
Anyway, so after hours of wading through the piles of sand that the Book Trust Authorities of Calcutta generously decided to dump all over the Fair grounds, I would still have the sparkly eyed energy of a 10 year old stuck to a vat of candy floss would have. Except that I was 10 years old, and I didn't even seem to care about candy floss then.
When I did choose a book I wanted to buy, which averaged at about seven at each stall, and there were about 2000 stalls in the entire place (- including books from Egypt, Laos, Cambodia, Japan, Peru, Chile, Bangladesh, Turkey, and what seemed like every other country in the world) my dad would spend like 10 minutes debating why this particular book didn't "seem good enough to be bought"... and I wouldn't say anything, just nod my head and keep it back, walking on waiting to finally receive his approval on some book that I liked.
I would still end up buying 7 to 8 books and obsess over how I was to read them.
I would chalk out mental plans as to how many chapters to read a day to make the book last the longest. I would calculate to stretch the book-devouring-marathon to last a month. Books that I could finish in a day, were read in 5 days, just so that my dad would be satisfied at having shelled out thousands of Rupees over books that didn't really seem good enough to him.
The point is I seem to have lost the fervour now. I don't drool over books anymore. Lately, however I seem to have the rekindled the dormant monster, with a somewhat satisfactory opening with a obscure rendition of an attempt at good writing - Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger.
However bad the book may have been, what suddenly came back to me is how I loved reading, and how I miss falling asleep with a paperback dangling down my hand.
So I recently found this website that lets you download thousands of ebooks for free. And out of the newfound or rather my rediscovered love for books, I plan to read most of them.
As an added treat, some books have an audio version, so you could just walk around with a sandwich in your hand, a jaunt to your sprint, while you hear a squeaky voice reading you your book in a queer foreign accent which will make you strain your ears to comprehend anything at all.
Other Stuff:
- My Dad is suddenly all excited about my trip from the sultry heat of India to the unfamiliar expanses of Northern U.S.. He is literally going overboard with all his shopping ventures, which is quite cute actually. Some shopping tips would certainly brim up his grin.
- Speaking of which I am supposed to have a fully drafted and organised Microsoft Spreadsheet-ised final list ready by now. Yeah my Dad is a methodical freak. And apparently I don't feel any where close to being his biological product when it comes to organisation.
- My food habits have gone from bad to worse. And I am enjoying every minute of it. Thanks to Amrita for the inspiration ; )
- Can someone please tell me how much food costs in the U.S.? I realise I will be burning a hole through my student pockets if I continue to obsess over food this way even after I transfer this year.
- And since I cannot seem to draw up any other worn down trivia about myself or the weary world around me here in Gurgaon, I will let you move on, but take a look at this website which hosts loads of mp3 music generated from paintings at Synestesia Software Music. Although the music has nothing to do with the aesthetics of art or even music itself, the technique associated is quite intriguing. This article by the composer Lauri Grohn speaks of this in some detail.
No comments:
Post a Comment