The reading life..

I've always liked being in the company of books. Many a people who are eye witness to my passion for books, keep asking the very old tiring question, "Why do you read so much?" and the "so much" part of the question doesn't actually highlight the quantity of my reading, it is their mere disgust.

"Why do you read?" - is a question that irks me to the core. "Why?" is possibly the simplest ever question to put and the toughest to answer, the tougher when its about something you love. When the answer doesn't seem to match the fervor we know we have, we tend to give exaggerated answers, "I can't live without them", "I can't imagine my life without them", "I'm nothing without them". Not questioning the enormous benefits of book reading, I still dare to suggest that books are always secondary. No matter what kind of subject and what beauty the prose has, the basic needs of human body can't be satisfied by book reading. (All the folks who put up their hands and interrupt, "Hey, I do forgo food and sleep to complete a book, you know?"- my answer would be, "You can afford that. There is a huge difference when you can forgo something and when there is nothing to forgo.") 

"Why do I read?" - Well, I was trying to find out an answer to this for a while now. The immediate advantage of reading lot of books,that the language improves has always abandoned me. Irrespective of the language, reading has hardly helped me in bettering my vocabulary. I don't read to write! I'm not one of those lucky souls who in worse of moods, open a book and get lost in a new magical fictional world and conveniently and  comfortably forget the real world.

For me, reading books can be metamorphical only two acts. When it is fiction, the act is that of sleeping. When it is non-fiction, the act is that of listening to another soul, completely engrossed. All fictional books I'd read thus far, left with the taste of sleeping experiences, say, a profound sleep, a nightmare, a disturbed sleep, incredibly beautiful dream and so on. And when it comes to non-fiction, it is like meeting a stranger on a train and listening to him with undivided attention. I don't know the person and would never have a chance again. Whatever has to happen, happens in that little window of time and then all I have is his memories. I read books for the exclusive bliss of dreaming without sleeping and listening without the compulsion to talk back.

I quite seriously intend to make notes of my readings on a regular basis in this blog. So, all you bookworms out there can take the pain to visit this blog. You'll find something or the other. The others, don't worry! There are many other things to share apart from books. :)