The JoY of ReaDinG

I remember when I was in primary school and had just started to read, I stumbled on a couple of story books. The stories of princes, princesses and warriors really fascinated me and when my father saw how engrossed I was in each book borrowed from the small school library, he promised he would buy story books for me if I came first in class. My! That promise motivated me to study hard and sure enough, came top of the class every year since Std VI.

Father would proudly take me to the book store and told me to choose two or three books and I would have read them in no time. So voracious was my appetite for reading that I would be depressed if my father did not buy the daily newspaper in national language. Due to my father's rural posting, I was forced to attend a school in national language. When we first bought the TV, the entertainment programmes were all in English. I used to marvel at the language, telling myself that, one day I would master it.

Being selected to study in one of the premier schools in the country had helped me achieve my childhood ambition of learning English. It was hard at first especially when some students appeared to be already conversant in the language. I kept telling myself, though, that this language would open up a whole world of new reading experiences. True enough, when I began to understand English, I was able to read magazines such as Reader's Digest, Life and Psychology.. all in English. Most magazines in national language then were about movies or the supernatural! Not my cup of tea.

As a teenager among teenagers in a residential school and away from protective parents, I certainly had a sackful of adolescents' problems. Selected articles read in RD and Psychology magazines helped me to deal with such issues as anxiety, jealousy,shyness and self-esteem.

Now I read for promoting and sustaining my technical horizon and for pleasure. I will not leave home without a book. Be it in the car, train,plane or ship and at times while waiting for something to start, my book is my companion. My horizon would be truncated had I only known how to read in my language, imagine waiting for those translations which may never come!. I would have missed enjoying books by Barack Obama ( I am reading "Dreams from my father" now) let alone those technical books and journals that are so essential to my profession. And now with the internet, knowledge acquisition has become almost limitless.