Nostalgic Rambling
Author :
Jaya
Blog :Miles to go...
Date: 5/9/2012 8:54:01 AM
Things were different a decade and a half back. I grew up in small towns. By small towns, I do not mean tier-2 cities. Really small towns, whose name you may not have heard. And I was the quiet, shy, introvert sort of a child (those who have seen me in more aggressive avatar later in my life might have difficulty believing it, but it’s true 
) I liked to sit in a corner, away from people, and read day and night. The problem? There wasn’t enough stuff available to read. There were no libraries or book clubs in those small towns, book stores carried mostly just textbooks and reference books (plus purchasing power was low) and there weren’t any elderly, reading-enthusiasts around on whose personal library I could have feasted.
I loved reading and I used to be desperate to find new stuff. I gobbled up pretty much any book or magazine that came my way, some of which my parents found inappropriate for my age (e.g. women’s magazine that I would read at the age of eight hiding from my parents ). When I went to my maternal uncles’ place during holidays, I would feast on the comics and others books that were available there. Once when I had run out of everything to read, one of my elder cousins got me a book of hundred stories, hoping that it would keep me busy for rest of my holidays. I finished it in one day and he threw up his hands!
And how things have changed.
I have an overflowing library now. So many books… New books are easier to buy and affordable for me for most part. There are libraries. There are e-books. There is Gutenberg. There is the entire Internet.
And amidst all this, I am too distracted to read anything calmly.
Be happy for the abundance or be sorry for the distraction?
