I have always been a sucker for books, even more for those which spoke of imagination, fantasy and all things fiction.
I can remember growing up reading Enid Blyton; lapped up almost everything she ever wrote from The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Noddy series, The Malory Towers, The Wishing Chair and Adventures of the Magic Faraway Tree being favourites!
In Class 7, Harry Potter happened to me and an entire gateway to a different magical world had opened up and I could talk about the books all the time; I knew all the dialogues backwards, and with every book, I got more and more involved. The Harry Potter series and J K Rowling, in her own capacity has taught me so much of the English language and sentence formation, subconsciously! When it comes to Harry Potter, several others and yours truly have not yet grown up and still have the same fervor and dedication to the series. I can still recall the time when I was working in Kolkata for a year, after graduation and the last book ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ had just been launched. I took a day off work, got to Landmark at 8 30 in the morning and read the entire book, cover to cover in that one day!
Another series I hold dear is ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit’ by J.R.R. Tolkien. I was introduced to this brilliance much later, around 2008, by a bookworm friend and ever since then have been a diehard fan! The sheer detailing of the characters, places and events are enough to mesmerize any fiction novel lover and I was definitely awestruck – beginning from the prologue to the annexure containing detailed maps and indexes of languages, all of which the man had come up with. Consistent to my principle of ‘book-before-film’, I watched one movie after another and felt that feeling of justice being done to the books unlike the gross brutality with which colossal chunks had been ripped apart from the Potter books while being transferred to celluloid. The LOTR movies are a treat – the casting is simply perfect, each character looks just like one would have imagined them to be, the sets are massive and elaborate, inclusive of keeping the trivialities alive, down to the tiniest element. The animation is brilliant and every mythical creature looks and behaves just like Tolkien has described them to be. Charged by the movies, I had to watch the ‘behind-the-scenes’ and making, hence came the need to lay my hands on the original DVDs. Whilst I was interning with Oxford Bookstores in Kolkata, came across the Trilogy in a hard bound case and the enticement of a free poster gave me itchy hands and they came home with me! And when they said free poster, they really meant to give us the value for money we had spent – the poster was brilliant and now hangs on one of the walls in my bedroom (pictured). The series have reruns once or twice every quarter and every time I read the books again, I spend enough and more time figuring how all of Middle Earth could sprout from somebody’s mind. Tolkien. Respect.
Although there are simply too many books I love, to list down, these are the highlights of my collection and they somehow help to keep the child in me alive, hence travel everywhere with me. If I had a chance, I would tell people who turn up their noses to fiction that they should not get intimidated by the size of the books or the minuscule fonts, but open up their minds to something new which might not be practical, might seen child-like, might not contribute to what is commonly known as ‘general knowledge’ but when you turn the last page of the book, you would be a slightly different person with altered beliefs on friendship, love, sacrifice and patriotism.
Guess that a lot of my eccentricities can find a root in the fact that I have grown up believing that selfishness, unkindness and hatred are evils; even if these beliefs don’t exist in the world we live in today, my books – my friends for life, will always stand as living proof that I am not alone.