Nostalgia
<i>Through the world of books</i>
RECENTLY I visited a bookstore. While I was rummaging through the books my eyes fell on the Archie and Classic comics. I was immediately transformed into another world, the world of my earlier reading. Other than textbooks I have always read what I enjoyed very much in agreement with L.A.G. Strong, who says in his essay, Reading for Pleasure:
"To my mind the only sensible reason for reading anything is because we enjoy it or hope to enjoy it. Of course, pleasure covers a whole variety of feelings and shades of feeling. But it is my strongest belief about reading that one should read only what one likes, and because one likes it."
I have loved reading and from an early age have been a bookworm. This fiery passion for reading was put into flame by Dr. Sanjida Khatun, the heart of Bangla literature and Tagore songs. When I was a little girl she lived in Dhaka and I lived in Sylhet. She used to send me huge parcels of books. From those books I entered the world of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and other fairy tales. There were fairy tales from different countries of the world. I liked Russian fairy tales a lot. My world of innocent imagination darted between lands of giants, fairies, unicorns, kings and queens. And there were detective stories in which I spent pass long hours totally wrapped in them. There were stories of getting lost in mysterious mountains. The mountains around my own home on the hill stood like living proof of the stories. There was one book, Bijoy, where the protagonist, a spy, journeyed to different countries. The names of different countries would awake in me the dreams to travel.
As I was just stepping into the early teenage I was lost in the world of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. That was while I was studying in Belgrade, in then Yugoslavia. I still recall the exciting 'bookish' smell of the library. My English teacher, Mr. McCollough, had shown me the way to the library and introduced me to the books. At home, almost every night after Mom had put me to bed, I would wait till she had retired and then put the bedside lamp on and go back to reading. My teachers never fell short in encouraging me to read. From time to time they would give me project works that had me looking up Encyclopedia Britannica. As I climbed the stairs to higher grades, I moved on to Great Expectations, Little House on the Prairie, Heidi and other classics. This winter I remember how I used to trudge through deep snow with my bag full of story books. But I never thought that the weight was heavy for I was too engrossed with expectations of new books from the library.
From Belgrade I went to Islamabad in Pakistan. Here Islamabad Model School for Girls was there with its invaluable library of books. We were allowed to take out two books every week. There were Bangla books too. I soon started reading them, starting off with Er Nam Shongshar by Bimal Mitra and going on to Rabindranath Tagore, Nihar Ranjan Gupta and others. And at this stage my friends and I started pouring into Mills and Boons and Georgette Heyer. We would smuggle in these books to school in our school bags and exchange them. The Archie comics made free rides in bundles for the teachers never punished us for carrying them to school. Betty and Veronica were always drawn on the back pages of our exercise copies. Jughead and Archie were there in stickers on the pencil boxes. The first introductions to great classics like Lord Jim, All Quiet On the Western Front, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and others came through Classic comics.
We came back to Bangladesh soon after Liberation and thus started another chapter of my reading cycle. As the days passed into late teenage, college life commenced with introductions to Srikanto by Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyaya's Srikanto and Tagore's Golpoguchcho. Sharat Chandra's comment, "Boro prem shudhu kachhei tanena, dureo thelia dei…" has stayed with me as a great teaching in real life.
For a period I was totally engrossed with Shanchyeeta, the poetry collection of Tagore. Among other poems I found Rahur Prem and Morichika absolutely mind captivating. I would recite in the late hours of the night. My youth, the late hours and the poems --- all would be a complete symphony. The British Council Library became my favourite place to spend the Saturdays. Reading magazines in the library for long hours and then borrowing books was the treat of the week.
Though constant inspiration for reading came from outside, all along there was a good supply of books at home too. My parents were keen readers and they were regular in bringing home supplies of books. I started reading books by Nevil Shute after reading his A Town Like Alice, a story of World War II. Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth also came to me through my mother. Agatha Christie's detective stories were part of everyday life at home. Men with curved moustaches would always remind me of Hercule Poirot. Harold Robins, Irving Stone, Victoria Holt and many other writers graced our book shelf at home.
As family life began and children entered the scene I kept up with my reading. The good thing about my reading was that my three children, when toddlers would find their Mom hidden behind books and would start a war with demands like, "amio ekta boi chai…!" (I want a book too!)
And I kept my house well stocked with books. My maternal uncle Waheedul Haque had advised me to keep books near at hand to make the children grow into good readers. The advice worked like magic and my children grew up passing long solitary hours with books of their own choice. My children do not miss a chance to give me supplies of books by contemporary writers like Paulo Coelho, Maeve Binchey, Jhumpa Lahiri and others.
Even now I am looking forward to going back to The Painted House by John Grisham. And so I continue to read for pleasure and firmly believe that we cannot force ourselves to read what we do not enjoy. Just as it is difficult to eat and digest the food you dislike, it is difficult to hold the mind on to something you do not like to read. And so read on in the sea of pleasure! I still enjoy reading the old familiar books. Those e-books still have not caught my fancy and, who knows, maybe one day I will start reading those too!
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