Birth of a Bookholic

When a child is born, with the child are born certain expectations be it of family or society. I was born in a small town called Shimla in Himachal Pradesh. My father just wanted to inculcate one good habit in us which was "Reading" and luckily he got his wish when I was born. If you have ever been to Shimla, you would have seen a colonial and gothic style building right next to the Christ Church, it was built in the 1860's, you must visit it if you love reading rare and old books, you might even find some timeless classics. Well, my father himself is quite a reader and therefore took my younger sister and me to the library and got us registered as members. I was just 5 years old and you would think what would books mean to a 5 year old but to me books were everything, I got my hands on books like Jataka Tales, Panchatantra and then moved on to Enid Blyton, Mills and Boon etc. I kept going through the books in the library, little did I know "Once a reader, always a reader". I started getting books from the library and we were issued 2 books only on one registered card so I started taking my sister along who had zero interest in books but had a registered card so that I could get books on her card as well. We had to return the books within 2 weeks approximately so my hunger to read the books quickly kept increasing and I read all the Enid Blyton books available in the library. That was not enough as my interest had just started growing, I had to look for other places from where I could get more books so I asked my parents to start getting books from their office library, most of the books they had were in Hindi though I preferred English more, but I was ok with it as long as I had something to read. I read Reader's Digest and all kind of other books which had some kind of fiction in it. My friends and family had to literally drag me out of the house to play as I was always reading, some books I read had questionable covers like Mills and Boon which were definitely a cause of concern in an Indian Household but my parents were comforted by the idea that atleast she is within the four walls of our house and not on a date with some random guy. Thus began my journey which is still going on with new books and new pages.

The State Library , Shimla will always be close to my heart as this is where I first got to know how I love turning the pages of a book, or taking a whiff of each and every page before reading it. Reading is something that has kept me going till date, it is my go to thing if I ever feel low or have some spare time on my hands during the day. Now that I have grown up and have to earn a living so I don't spend as much time with books as I used to but I make sure that I read atleast twice a day. Reading before bed and early in the morning is a ritual for me which I would definitely want to pass on to the next generation, instead of the constant worry or the filthy habit of looking at our phone's all the time which seems to be the only habit of our generation these days.