"Some ask for peace, some for friends and some other for happiness; I ask for books and I get them all."
'A book worm'!!!
They called me a 'book warm'. Yes, I am one. If you want to kill me, stop my access to books. I really have not been able to understand whether they make me forget my pain or take it away, but what I know is they do something magical to me which is totally ineffable.
I started reading perhaps because I could find refuge there. Misfitting in the world, I found a cozy and comfortable shelter there in the black and white and got lost, totally. They have been great friends and amazing teachers. They have given me such vicarious experiences, which are impossible to attain otherwise. Some say heaven is beyond the earth and others say it's on the earth. Well, I find it there in the books.
I understand the value of dreams and hope against the hope sometimes. Well, I know a shepherd who got the treasure he dreamed of. I know the universe helps us, if we truly desire something, something very deeply, maybe from the deepest part of our heart. I know this because of "The Alchemist".
The ultimate happiness is found within. But paradoxically you cannot attain it unless you have searched it everywhere out. As true happiness does not have any form, it is simply a realization. It comes through experiences, the experiences that give you anything but happiness. It is little perplexing. But to put it simply: you can't see light unless you have seen darkness. You can be knowledgeable only if you have been ignorant once. Failures to attain it leads to the ultimate happiness. Perhaps, the philosophy is so deep that it can't be put in a few words, but I absorbed it totally when I came across "Siddhartha".
The best compliment in my life ever: "You are intractable". I still remember the words and their throw and the pitch and the anger with which they were spoken to me. I would have been hurt really hard if I had not read "Atlas Shrugged" where Paul Larkin uses the same line and the line becomes a very famous quote. There was a smile on my face and I was enjoying it, though I was not supposed to.
I stopped giving a damn to people and what they think about me when I was introduced to an anonymous person. Yes, an anonymous person. He was called Equality 7-2521. "Anthem'' brought a badly required transformation in me. I understood the importance of "I" when I read the book. I grew up years in just two weeks while reading Anthem.
When I was a kid, I used to tell my grandmother that I would want to become an astronaut. I wanted to visit the moon. Funny. The sky used to mesmerize me, perhaps because of its vastness. I loved gazing at stars. I still do. The dream was forgotten in the hustle and bustle of growing up. But Carl Sagon made it vital once again. "Cosmos" appealed to my imagination. I was almost illiterate in astronomy, but the man has presented it in such a brilliant way that I could embrace it, I could embrace the cosmos.
(To be contd..)
