What do you look for in a book?

My favourite piece in Bookless in Baghdad (although it is hard to choose) is the one that this edition begins with – growing up with books in India.

As with Tharoor, I read copiously, rapidly and indiscriminately… I have memories of many many lonely moments in childhood banished by books – which took me through exotic lands and dangerous adventures – and entirely allowing my imagination to take over – kids holidaying alone in a lighthouse in a deserted island, matching wits with fierce kidnappers… (maybe that is why I did not enjoy the televised version of Famous Five half so much – and I still don’t enjoy movies made from books – they force me to look at the situation as they present it – and not through my imagination…)

But as I grew up, I found myself looking for and enjoying books not which offered me an escape route – from loneliness or boredom – (although I still turn to dear PGW when the going gets tough) – but those which offer me something that I can relate to… indeed, the books that I put down with a feeling of satisfaction today are those which offer me something more – shared experiences. When I think about it, this is exactly why I loved Tharoor’s piece on growing up with books in India – I could relate thoroughly to the sentiments he has expressed here – It is, I suppose, a uniquely Indian experience to embrace both Biggles and Birbal, Jeeves and the Jatakas, Tintin and Tenaliraman in your reading. Growing up as a reader in India left me with a vivid sense of books devoured as sources of entertainment, learning, escape, – and vicarious experience – as with most things Tharoor says, I couldn’t have said it better 🙂

I was thinking about this recently as I read a couple of books – both by Indian writers – both fairly ‘light’ reading – and both of which I had mixed feelings about – neither of them is the stuff that great boooks are made of – by way of writing style or story / plot or even language… but there was something about the books that I enjoyed (in bits and pieces) – they made me think, smile and even laugh out aloud in parts.

One of them is the itinerant indian – (stories of adventure and discovery, of nostalgia and novelty, of mishaps and misery, of confusion and comedy, the blurb says). The book armchair transported me (as the dedication offers) not (only) across space to distant lands which I have never visited and only dream of, but also across time – to those moments when I have experienced something similar to what the writer has – which translates to a been there-done that- felt that reading experience… I know what Raju Ramanathan means when he writes about his railway reminiscences – how often have you queued up at Madras Central – or any other railway station – bleary eyed at 7 am – waiting for the exalted doors of the ticket booking office to open, or what Vidya Baglodi must have felt like when she returned to Bangalore after ten years to find it entirely transformed, and in a not-so-pleasant way… and much more… personal ‘stories’ which trigger a distant memory-bell within me… and then the smile of empathy….

And the other book is Piece of Cake by Swati Kaushal – with its mixed reviews – I suspect I shocked and embarrased a few friends when I announced that I quite enjoyed the book – and thinking back, I know that the book to me was not about the ‘story’ – heavily borrowed from (sorry, inspired by) Bridget Jones or the writing where the effort to be constantly funny shows… it was to me about those shared experiences – of being in ‘corporate’ life, dealing with pompous advertising executives, trying to explain to a smug knowall the value of qualitative research, trying not be impressed with a HR executive who actually seems to be clued in to what is happening inside the company (although it turns out later that he actually does not – thank god for that – some stereotypes are just not meant to be played around with). As this rediff reviewsays, In the process, she writes up a story of corporate one-upmanship with enough insights into the workings of a multinational firm (with marriage as a side accompaniment)

And as I write this, I came across Why I Read on Kitabkhana… When a reader falls in love with a book it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced. We love relatively few books in our lives and those books become parts of the way we see our lives, we read our lives through them, and their descriptions of the inner and outer worlds become mixed up with ours, they become ours. – Salman Rushdie in Guardian

After-thought : I do not mean by this post (as someone had emailed me) that the reader agree with everything the book / author says – that indeed beats the purpose of good writing – what I mean is that the if the author is able to touch some chord within you – making you think – agree or disagree – and not leave you cold and distant… then that is getting somewhere…