MY INTERACTION WITH A BOOK LOVER

 

      Image Courtesy : My Samsung Galaxy E7 Smartphone  

There is no friend as loyal as a book    - Ernest Hemingway

At 50+, I am not overzealous for material possessions.  I just want my daily life move effortlessly without losing steam.  In the process of maintaining energy and enthusiasm, I rely on   books. 

Books occupy a good part of my life.  Not only   they provide me very valuable information and update my knowledge, they help me to marshal up my inner resources to think differently, creatively so as to live each moment passionately.

With this mindset, I manage not to allow ageing symptoms creep into my system. Though, my body has some signs of it, at mental level, I am much more vigorous than in my 20s-30s.  The credit for this could be attributed to some of the great books I read. 

For five days in a week, it is a virtual sprint in my professional life, leaving little scope to put to pen on thoughts I feel to write.   So when Saturday dawns in, I quickly unlock the Writer's chamber in my mind and live two days there and lock and enter back into frenzy world of toxic emotions for bread and butter.   This  switching of gears needs sturdiness of mind and hope the Almighty is releasing it in abundant quantities in me.

It is great that the  winter  brings tremendous joy to the writer in me.   I don't wish Heaven should come to my way.  I just wish to have trouble-free solitary walks to properly stack my thoughts to churn out some good prose or verse.  While choosing the places, I lay more stress on those locations which are near to Nature. 

A few years ago during my stay in Delhi, one day, I chose the above foot-over-bridge in South Delhi for my reading saga.  The reason was  that the place was more vibrant with roaring traffic below the bridge and  walking  on that bridge on that balmy evening brought me so much joy and I spent a good one hour in reading a book.

While I was deeply immersed in my reading, one foreign woman tourist approached me with a smile and asked me to take my snap.   When I asked the reason, she told me that it was very strange to find someone reading in public places in India.   My reading on that bridge with the aid of street light might have triggered her to approach me.  During exchange of words, she further narrated her own story of how her dad inspired her to read books in her childhood that helped her to build a personal library. 

Meeting  like-minded people gives a joy of its own sort.   My brief interaction with a book lover on that evening  gave  a tremendous joy to my heart.