The Reader-hood Glow

Flashback: The sun shone the brightest two days ago. My heartbeats were on an Olympic race for the past week and finally found peace just 48 hours ago.

Present: What is this world without something good to read and what are we without travelling the worlds our books so graciously take us to?

We don’t need a Booker Prize winner or a Pulitzer Prize nominee to say words like that, for the sparkling eyes and grinning faces of every reader tell us so much about ‘reading’. Have you ever seen the joy on their faces as they ascend the holy steps of a book store to be united with the book they truly desire? Have you ever caught them performing pranayama after the final payment of bills? Their faces glow and glisten while breathing in the aura of the print and breathing out the rich feel of a fresh book into thin air. Have you caught them doing the little dance of success as the online delivery boy turns his back to leave? Did you hear the same delivery boy being blessed for a beautiful wife and 10 children only because some bookworm in some corner of the world was waiting for him like the citizens of Ayodhya waiting for Lord Rama’s return.

OMG, I have goosebumps already. So now you know why I said ‘worlds’. Literature can take us to parallel universe, different cultures and even to our mythologies. There is room for everyone!

Book lovers are often thought to be the ones caught up in shackles of spectacles, never knowing the difference between Kim and Kourtney Kardashian, the ones to know the meaning of every word printed in the Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, the ones to have known the kundali of Shakespeare and read everything he has ever penned! Sadly, no. We could be none of the above and yet so much more than Hollywood gossip scenes.

If you are or if you have a book lover pal, know that he or she probably knows a little (in the least) about various topics! Reading comes without boundaries and passports and you can keep going with the flow effortlessly, travel the road less taken and then make a U turn to travel the one which keeps you paced up with the rest.

Also no, readers are not horses tied up with eye flaps that cause us to keep looking straight. We enjoy works of many many authors, budding as well as well established. So, the question ‘who’s your favourite writer?’ dies out with wild flames even before it can see some sun. Literature is taken for the work never for the person writing it.

That reminds me how Joanne Rowling wrote a crime fiction under a certain pseudo name in order to avoid being a celebrated writer. That to me is more magical than the syllabus of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Flashback: Almost a week ago, the two day delivery assurance of a new Dan Brown book got me jumping like a kangaroo. Second after second my patient wait turned into sad grimace and then to sadder world where no sun shone.

While I got time to think of what readers like me feel, someone knocked on the door and out came Dan Brown in crimson hardcover edition!

P.S. Only if someone could brew me a hot cup of coffee with the reading!