I’ve always been fascinated by words and the picture they are
able to create when strung in a particular order. Rudyard Kipling referred to
words as the most powerful drug used by mankind. Ever since I was able to
string together the alphabets to form words and then to join them and form
sentences, it was always a thrill to unravel a new world or see the same one
through the eyes of different authors. I’ve travelled the length and breadth of
some places thanks to the picture the words have painted.
Tom Sawyer always
brings to my mind a picture of a small naughty boy with a pail of whitewash in
hand and paintbrush in the other, slowly moving on to how he eventually makes
dimes out of his task. I’ve almost felt the breath of the Swiss Alps and tasted
goat’s milk in Heidi through the
description of the author. I’ve sailed the whale ship Pequod along with Ishmael
and almost felt the terror Captain Ahab put us through to get his personal
vendetta against Moby Dick. Like Matilda I went on olden-day sailing
ships with Joseph Conrad, went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and travelled India
with Rudyard Kipling. I travelled all over the world while sitting in my little
room at home. There are many a times I’ve felt suspense and thrill and not put
the book down till I got to the end of a Famous
Five, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys or The Secret Seven as if I was almost helping
them solve the mystery myself.
I’m sure there are a lot of books which have been just
narratives of things as they were or mere explanations of things as they should
be. However, nothing brought alive the war and its consequences as ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Anne
Frank or ‘The Book Thief’ by Markus
Zusak or ‘Désirée’ by Annemarie
Selinko. The characters tell a story and the authors have weaved the tales
around how the war was affecting the lives of people like no other history book
I had read when in school. Although I guess, it might have been a task getting
a bunch of kids to read heavy literature when reading curriculum books itself
was considered a chore!
There are many a evenings when with my head stacked with pillows
and feet tucked in my favourite blanket, with my mother’s incessant nagging in
the background that I would one day spoil my eyes, I’ve peeked along with Alice in Wonderland or slept off to the
tales of talking animals by Enid Blyton or relived the life of Black Beauty. I’ve dreamt of mythical
beings and the magic of the land of Narnia
as C. S. Lewis painted it for us and have joined in the movement with the
inmates of George Orwell’s The Animal
Farm. These stories left open doors to multiple interpretations with my
mind being the only barrier to how far I could stretch the boundaries.
Food was often the victim of abandonment and so were
academics and friends as I was engrossed in the lives that I was unveiling
through the author’s eyes. Times have changed. Different genres of literature
have held me captivated at various stages of interest. The more I read, the
more I want to continue reading and explore. I could be lost in the beauty of a
sunset as seen on a beach or be enthralled by the beauty of nature as seen from
the top of a mountain. However, even when my eyes are not reading the printed
letters, I find myself writing notes in my mind to go along with the picture to
capture the essence of the moment. That is what adds flavour to the memory when
I pick it out of my memoirs someday to reminisce. Like Helen Keller said,
Literature is my Utopia!
