I have always loved reading. Some of my fondest memories of my childhood are that of lying face down on my bed cooped up in my room while reading a book. Like almost every amateur bookworm, I started with the established standard, the Famous Five and The Secret Seven before slowly graduating to Hardy Boys and Agatha Christie’s novels. I remember strutting through the school corridor during recess proudly proclaiming to my friends that I had finished the Famous Five series before everyone of them. I still have some of those books in my old cupboard, the pages have turned yellow but memories are still afresh. Sometimes at night, I would turn into an octopus and wind my tentacles around the book and tug them closer and closer to my heart till I fell asleep.
Soon I dove headfirst into the world of Harry Potter followed by Satyajit Ray’s Feluda classics and Rabindranath Tagore’s seminal masterpieces. These were the first books I actually enjoyed reading. I was infatuated with the eccentricities of the characters, they gave me a chance to coexist in a world without disturbing my real world, which was dysfunctional at the time.
Going from 10th to 11th grade, the idiosyncrasies of JEE preparations gave me excuses to put off reading every now and then and before I knew it, I had lost my carefully cultivated love for books. After the JEE exams were over, I found it very difficult to finish a book. Bemused by my antics, I registered this fact in my head and a ball of grief materialized in my heart. I came to peace with it.
However, this Pandemic came as a boon to me. It took away the excuse I had been giving myself for the last few years, that I didn’t have enough time to read. I was always judgmental of people who read books on kindle or their phones. I considered it to be sacrilege. Now, determined to read books and also being broke at the same time I decided to give it a shot. In about a few weeks I was able to rekindle my love for the written word. I noticed incremental growth in my reading habits and within the next month, I had thrown myself into the world of esoteric literature squeezing in non-fictions every now and then. Reading non-fiction had always felt like a chore to me, however, now the worlds that I could explore through them were not necessarily fictional but very real. I could get a general overview of subjects people had dedicated their entire lives to. People who are close to me, know me spewing random factoids in between conversations so as someone who is constantly curious, reading a book a week has been a gratifying experience. Fiction, on the other hand, has helped me answer questions about my life, questions like what I want with my life, who I want to be with, or whether happiness was the goal I want to pursue.
As a lackadaisical person who is always waking up at 12 in the afternoon, I decided it is about time I optimize my morning routine. I pulled my diary from the shelf and started writing down my schedule with the utmost sincerity. I promised myself I would wake up as soon as the clock chimes 6 on my phone and then jump out of bed with boundless optimism. As I finished writing my schedule with meticulous detail, I cracked open The Hating Game by Sally Thorne. I started reading it at around 11 pm, with the intention of going to sleep by no further than 12. When I felt I had done enough reading for the night, I glanced at the clock, it screamed 1 am in my head. Unhesitatingly I decided to keep reading and finished the book by 4 am. I am kicking myself for ruining my schedule the very first day but do I regret it?
–Article by Pramit Majumder, 3rd year Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering