Series -2
Hmm…it has been a little too long a gap between my series 1 and 2. My second interest in life after music is books!!!
I started this flair also quite young! I remember, when I lived in Calcutta (now, Kolkata), I used to travel to my hometown, Salem by The Coromandel Express. These train journeys were fun and great thing to look forward.
The meal in the train, the home food packed in dubba’s (boxes) that lasted only for one meal through the entire train journey that lasts for two whole days…in the days gone by! And we had to open the dubba’s and eat the food as soon as we got in, coz they used to be so deliciously made. They were mostly of favorite stuffs such as, poori with alu sabji or tomato rice with alu fry or lemon rice with alu fry or some soft idlies with that perfect chutney or just some chapathi’s with the tomato curry……Man, even now my mouth waters thinking and writing about those delicacies.
It was great fun to manage the stuff on your lap and eat…without spilling them on to the floor of the train. Otherwise, it would be a big mess, unless somebody comes cleaning it, normally this cleaning would be done by some grown-up kids or some physically disabled person, a means of earning for them!!!
Just the thought revolts, my dad used to pay them appropriately coz, even in their plight there are people who used to walk away without doing the deed and would be perfectly able. Some lazy guy, who sought means to earn a penny by mocking an act!!!
Ok, deviating from the topic…I am talking about the habit of reading. So you know, by now, where does my scenario come from!!
On these long journeys, when I was in school and very little about in 3rd or 4th standard, I started reading the Amar Chitra Katha, Tinkle, and Panchatantra stories….!!!
I brought them for a price of Rs.5, which could buy you a lot of things. My dad used to not get those saying it might hurt my eyes…and other things. But I insisted on it and would buy them. I had two wonderful bound books of varied stories and legends….but some friend of mine flicked it from me…! Alas! I will not forget her deed, even though I forgot how she looked!!! The irony is that I lost them in Bangalore, the same Bangalore where I am right now?!
I used to get on to the train, wait for the train to leave the station and then devour on the food that we carried and hold on to the window seat and sit comfortably with the legs folded underneath my lap and open the book and read the lines….and drift into a world of my one…Kavitha in Wonderland!
I used to love the cool breeze across the face and on my hair…I still love traveling by the window seat and the breeze on my face!!! It feels like heaven!!! You can see the dry and wet lands pass by, the greenery, the forgotten lampposts, the devastated temples and buildings, the big round well in the fields and the varied trees and pathway that get you lost in to cities and towns you never know!!! The graphic representations on the books would used to come alive on those vacant spaces!!!
I developed my reading habits with these small kids’ books. Then, I slowly got into reading Tin Tin, Archies, Asterix, and various other comic books.
Slowly, I got bored with them and moved into big series books such as Edin Blyton – The Famous Five, Robert Stevenson – The Treasure Hunt, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain, Charles Dickens – The Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield, and many likes!!!
I was in fifth standard when I went to watch a play - A Midsummer’s Night Dream by Shakespeare enacted by a troupe of London Artists, in a violin shaped auditorium in Bangalore(now, Bengaluru). This violin shaped auditorium is called Chowdaiah Memorial Hall. We all received an adapted version of the play in easy understandable language as a hand-out. I remember having the hand-out close to my heart locked in a cupboard for long!!!
I was surprised by the way the play was done, the curtains, the costumes, the make-up, the artists and the whole thing. I guess, I decided to do a little bit of acting myself. I had in fact shook hands with an artist and felt like a queen…as this privilege was given to very few of them!!!
I have played the role of ‘Lady Macbeth’ the main protagonist in the Shakespearean play ‘Macbeth’ during my school days. The acting stint of mine was also due to a movie, I got to see early in my life an English movie in a theatre, ‘The Sound of Music’. This movie influenced me to learn the English language in the right and proper sense!!!
I was very much impressed by the play and fell in love with Shakespeare as well!!!(Still do). I started reading his adapted versions of his plays by various authors…!! Plays like As You Like It, Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Nights Dream, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night, King Lear and The Tempest.
Thanks to being in a central board education, the best of my companion in school was my English books…they were two, one Non-detailed and another Prose and Poetry text.
The non-detailed text book had these adapted writings of the famous novels and several short stories, which were from some of the famous writers, R.K.Narayanan stories and novels, Ruskin Bonds stories, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, and many others.
I started carrying them instead of buying novels and short stories coz, they were costly and my dad did not believe I could understand all that stuff….!!!
Then, when I slowly grew and got into college it was mostly fiction and then when I comprehended the world and the knowledge spread across the world I got into non-fiction stuff and got interested in reading books on various genres of writing.
I have read a lot of them starting with Sidney Sheldon, Robin Cook, Jeffery Archer, Arthur Hailey, Robert Ludlum, Irving Wallace, Jawaharlal Nehru (One better Indian Writer), Gandhi (the worst writer), Rabindranath Tagore, Girish Karnad, R.K Narayanan, Ruskin Bond, Ayn Rand, Sarojini Naidu, Adolf Hitler, Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Franklin, Milton, Napoleon Bonaparte, Shiv Khera, Robin Sharma, Paulo Coelho, Khaled Hosseini, Shashi Tharoor and many more……….!!!!!
End of it what, obsessed, I am obsessed with books and book stores, you end a messed up reader who goes mad after seeing a bookstore and picks up books more than you can read at one time!
I started this flair also quite young! I remember, when I lived in Calcutta (now, Kolkata), I used to travel to my hometown, Salem by The Coromandel Express. These train journeys were fun and great thing to look forward.
The meal in the train, the home food packed in dubba’s (boxes) that lasted only for one meal through the entire train journey that lasts for two whole days…in the days gone by! And we had to open the dubba’s and eat the food as soon as we got in, coz they used to be so deliciously made. They were mostly of favorite stuffs such as, poori with alu sabji or tomato rice with alu fry or lemon rice with alu fry or some soft idlies with that perfect chutney or just some chapathi’s with the tomato curry……Man, even now my mouth waters thinking and writing about those delicacies.
It was great fun to manage the stuff on your lap and eat…without spilling them on to the floor of the train. Otherwise, it would be a big mess, unless somebody comes cleaning it, normally this cleaning would be done by some grown-up kids or some physically disabled person, a means of earning for them!!!
Just the thought revolts, my dad used to pay them appropriately coz, even in their plight there are people who used to walk away without doing the deed and would be perfectly able. Some lazy guy, who sought means to earn a penny by mocking an act!!!
Ok, deviating from the topic…I am talking about the habit of reading. So you know, by now, where does my scenario come from!!
On these long journeys, when I was in school and very little about in 3rd or 4th standard, I started reading the Amar Chitra Katha, Tinkle, and Panchatantra stories….!!!
I brought them for a price of Rs.5, which could buy you a lot of things. My dad used to not get those saying it might hurt my eyes…and other things. But I insisted on it and would buy them. I had two wonderful bound books of varied stories and legends….but some friend of mine flicked it from me…! Alas! I will not forget her deed, even though I forgot how she looked!!! The irony is that I lost them in Bangalore, the same Bangalore where I am right now?!
I used to get on to the train, wait for the train to leave the station and then devour on the food that we carried and hold on to the window seat and sit comfortably with the legs folded underneath my lap and open the book and read the lines….and drift into a world of my one…Kavitha in Wonderland!
I used to love the cool breeze across the face and on my hair…I still love traveling by the window seat and the breeze on my face!!! It feels like heaven!!! You can see the dry and wet lands pass by, the greenery, the forgotten lampposts, the devastated temples and buildings, the big round well in the fields and the varied trees and pathway that get you lost in to cities and towns you never know!!! The graphic representations on the books would used to come alive on those vacant spaces!!!
I developed my reading habits with these small kids’ books. Then, I slowly got into reading Tin Tin, Archies, Asterix, and various other comic books.
Slowly, I got bored with them and moved into big series books such as Edin Blyton – The Famous Five, Robert Stevenson – The Treasure Hunt, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain, Charles Dickens – The Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield, and many likes!!!
I was in fifth standard when I went to watch a play - A Midsummer’s Night Dream by Shakespeare enacted by a troupe of London Artists, in a violin shaped auditorium in Bangalore(now, Bengaluru). This violin shaped auditorium is called Chowdaiah Memorial Hall. We all received an adapted version of the play in easy understandable language as a hand-out. I remember having the hand-out close to my heart locked in a cupboard for long!!!
I was surprised by the way the play was done, the curtains, the costumes, the make-up, the artists and the whole thing. I guess, I decided to do a little bit of acting myself. I had in fact shook hands with an artist and felt like a queen…as this privilege was given to very few of them!!!
I have played the role of ‘Lady Macbeth’ the main protagonist in the Shakespearean play ‘Macbeth’ during my school days. The acting stint of mine was also due to a movie, I got to see early in my life an English movie in a theatre, ‘The Sound of Music’. This movie influenced me to learn the English language in the right and proper sense!!!
I was very much impressed by the play and fell in love with Shakespeare as well!!!(Still do). I started reading his adapted versions of his plays by various authors…!! Plays like As You Like It, Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Nights Dream, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night, King Lear and The Tempest.
Thanks to being in a central board education, the best of my companion in school was my English books…they were two, one Non-detailed and another Prose and Poetry text.
The non-detailed text book had these adapted writings of the famous novels and several short stories, which were from some of the famous writers, R.K.Narayanan stories and novels, Ruskin Bonds stories, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, and many others.
I started carrying them instead of buying novels and short stories coz, they were costly and my dad did not believe I could understand all that stuff….!!!
Then, when I slowly grew and got into college it was mostly fiction and then when I comprehended the world and the knowledge spread across the world I got into non-fiction stuff and got interested in reading books on various genres of writing.
I have read a lot of them starting with Sidney Sheldon, Robin Cook, Jeffery Archer, Arthur Hailey, Robert Ludlum, Irving Wallace, Jawaharlal Nehru (One better Indian Writer), Gandhi (the worst writer), Rabindranath Tagore, Girish Karnad, R.K Narayanan, Ruskin Bond, Ayn Rand, Sarojini Naidu, Adolf Hitler, Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Franklin, Milton, Napoleon Bonaparte, Shiv Khera, Robin Sharma, Paulo Coelho, Khaled Hosseini, Shashi Tharoor and many more……….!!!!!
End of it what, obsessed, I am obsessed with books and book stores, you end a messed up reader who goes mad after seeing a bookstore and picks up books more than you can read at one time!
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