GROWING THROUGH BOOKS

A very famous saying goes “A book is a gift that you can open again”. As a 90s kid, I used to read short stories, fairy tales, Aesop fables that I had been gifted by relatives or that I used to buy from our school on the day of Parent-Teacher Meet in August every year. But it was only in the year 2002 (age 11), when I was captivated by the idea of “reading” and that book was J.K Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone”. And that book opened many doors into the world of reading – from Harry Potter, to Nancy Drew, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, Hardy Boys – it was a reading marathon or spree. I started to eagerly wait for December every year for the Annual Book fair of Guwahati. I wished my sister to say that she needed something from Pan bazar so that I could tag along with my mother and cajole her for a little indulgence in “Western Book Depot”. Years rolled, different books from the mentioned titles got exchanged between friends as my reading genre remained limited within that. However, with the stepping up of classes, I got introduced to another genre with the introduction of “Rapid Reader” in English literature. From David Copperfield, Tom Sawyer, Silas Marner, we moved to Black Beauty, The Invisible Man and Jane Eyre with the years. Each schoolbook left me hungry – I wanted to know if there was anything more to these; how was original version by the author, I wondered. Our former President, late A.P.J Abdul Kalam’s “Wings of Fire” and “Ignited Minds” further fueled the fire of reading “non-fiction”.  The transition to higher secondary school introduced me to Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist”, “Veronika decides to die”, “Brida” and “The Winner stands Alone” – these were not just books but things that questioned my existence in this world, my life as a woman, and introduced the words like “love”, “sex” and “soulmate” in my understanding.

With “Harry Potter” being a constant, I transitioned from school to college. Academic pressure, living in hostels in a “foreign place” limited my indulgence in pleasure reading as I got more engrossed in Kotpal’s and Berne’s “Non-Chordates”, Varma and Agarwal’s “Developmental Biology”, and Gayatri Verma’s “Reproductive Biology”. But that age also stirred a new and never-before experienced emotion by the name of “I too had a love story” by Ravinder Singh. His melancholy strain managed to rustle some feathers of unknown feelings in the 20-year-old me that was probably buried under the layers of dissections, specializations, and “molecular biology and biotechnology” – the new fascination of that time (2012). It was at that time that I realized that books can “actually” move you – they can make you laugh, weep, and angry – something that I had earlier thought was only possible through movies. I flew to University, harboring the heavy words of Khalid Hosseni in “The Kite Runner” and “The Thousand Splendid Suns”. I juggled Watson’s Molecular Biology, Albert's Cell Biology and Lehninger’s Biochemistry with this Afghan writer’s “And the Mountains Echoed”. Two years passed in a flicker and brought me to research – life changed to a different phase. I “earned” a stipend and no longer had syllabus and exams. It was that time of my life where I could actually seriously indulge in “buying” books for nurturing my reading habit rather than “borrowing” it from friends or “asking” my parents for the same. Failed experiments in lab, depression of rejected manuscripts was solaced by “The Fault in our Stars” and “Train to Pakistan”. Every gift to a “reader” friend was ordered well-in advance as it had to be first relished by the gifter i.e me. Late deliveries accounted me for reading “The Catcher in the Rye” and “Love in the Time of Cholera” in one night. And on my earning of a doctorate, Ma gifted me Barack Obama’s autobiography!

Life became complicated with the onset of COVID-19 – I was still contemplating the idea of a homosexual Muslim male in Kabul (The Weaver) as an Assistant Professor when we were forced to confine ourselves within our homes. I faced the challenges of “a home” for the first time because I was now a responsible “adult”. Lockdown however, introduced me to a new genre – thriller – as I felt this could bring some “excitement” in the “boring” days. I read and re-read Paula Hawkins “The Girl on the Train” to understand the plot. I participated in a book gifting challenge among different readers and landed with JojoMoyes’ “Me before You” from an unknown source.

As this 30-year-old me sits on this piece, I recall the impact of Wuthering Heights and Virginia Wolff’s masterpieces on me. Is “The Second Sex” the reason for my writeups featuring mostly in “Women’s Plus” column of The Assam Tribune and a lot of my relatives referring to me as “Feminist”? An avid reader can often become a good story-teller as I have heard. Probably that’s why I think more about twists and plots when I sit to finish my collection of short stories as I am currently obsessing with Novoneel Chakraborty’s thrillers.

This piece is not to “bray” about what I have read over the years but it is a reflection on how different books have played a poignant role at different phases of my life and how they have shaped me today as a person. Also, to those who call me “feminist”, don’t belittle me with an analogy with “burn-the-bra” gang as I have learned my art from former US First Lady, Michelle Obama (Becoming).