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Even during the toughest phases of life, books can be a saviour

These days, we often hear about people opting to give up their careers for their passions. Engineers turn to organic farming, doctors end up as writers and financial consultants become fitness gurus. What may be the reason for all these people to chose something unconnected to what they have been doing for years? Maybe, over the years, they come to realise what can bring them peace and happiness in life. Isn’t that we all strive to achieve? To live happily and peacefully.

For me, my reading habit has always been a saviour. Books had always remained my great friends. I can’t recollect when I started reading, but I can remember how reading always brought me happiness. Growing up in a small coastal town in Kerala, in an era when television and electronic gadgets were unheard-of, for an introvert child like me, books were a natural choice. My growing-up days in Kerala were a blessing. As most children who live outside their home States, I was also multilingual, which helped me read books in several languages. I loved reading English classics and Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi authors. The small municipal library that I visited after my school and college hours had a good collection. Hence, I read Jane Austen and Thakazhi with equal interest. Bharathiyar’s Kannamma songs gave me the same pleasure that Maithili Sharan Gupt’s Yashodhara gave.

As years rolled by, when I was multitasking with two young children and managing a household, the habit of reading never left me. Whenever and wherever I could, I would be reading a book. Those challenging years were made less tough to me because I would retreat with a book to keep myself sane from an otherwise round-the-clock routine! I realised how much this habit was keeping me hooked when I caught my toddler holding a book in her hand (of course, she was holding it upside down) with a doll in her lap!

Now in my sixties, books are still my close companions. Reading from a tablet or Kindle or a hard cover hardly makes any difference to me — books remain my best friends, whatever shape or form they are in.

Even during the toughest phases of my life, when I was going through severe mental and physical pain due to cancer, books were my saviour. During my chemotherapy treatment days, when I could hardly sit up or hold a book in my hand, I used the Audible app to listen to Michelle Obama’s Becoming and Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 lessons for the 21st century. In those days of pain and trauma, I understood the meaning of Mason Cooley’s famous quote, “Reading gives us some place to go when we have to stay where we are.”

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