Memories of a long lost universe

Once upon a time, in a galaxy not so far away, there was a small, insignificant little blue-green planet that orbited an insignificant star. On a fairly insignificant day in January, a boy child was born to an insignificant middle class family in an insignificant third world country in a year in which nothing significant happened. That boy was me.

So, my childhood. Kiddie Days. Well, I remember no cable TV. All I ever got to watch was Oshin and Pingu the Penguin on Doordarshan. Also, Ramayana and Mahabharata. On weekends. So, I did a heck of a lot of reading. Started with Noddy, of course. My cousins watch it on Cartoon Network. That's a shame. Soon graduated past the Enid Blyton mysteries to my first Hardy Boys when I was eight. Definitely too young. Scared the wits out of me. Stuck to Enid Blytons for a few more years then. Eventually, I was sneaking out the Sidney Sheldon thrillers from my mom's room. Tried an MB. Atrocious. How do gals read that crap? Then, I read Vladimir Narbokov's Lolita. Doff your hat to that book. A masterpiece of writing. An absolute gem. Changed my whole outlook on the fairer sex. Girls were no longer venomous things to be looked upon only with suspicion. They were amazingly well-rounded, soft, curvy, luscious creations of God. Sugar and spice and all that's nice. I never really liked that rhyme actually. Too sexist. Anyway, that's when IIT happened.

And, well, my reading habits changed. It was time to discard the cheap thrillers for the dark, deep novels. Kafka. Rushdie. Ayn Rand. And a girl as well. That's water under the bridge now though. Girls are poison once more. But the dark novels remain. I'm a changed person now. The zest, the enthusiasm, the so-called killer instinct is gone. I cry a lot more. I also smile a lot more. But the novels remain. Whatever else has happened, thank heavens the gift of reading has remained. Whatever else will happen, I know I can always drown myself in some novel and be lost to this world. The insignificant blue-green one. Another world beckons. One that encompasses everything from Never-Never land to the mythical land of Narnia. From dragons to hippogriffs to Alice and her Wonderland. Thank God for books.

Amen.