DIFFERENT MUSIC

• I went to the Connemara library recently and saw the entire area had changed beyond recognition. Naturally, as I was going there after 15 years.
• Getting a membership there was a nostalgic experience. The local lending libraries had simply left me tired with their staple diet of bestsellers/pulp fiction. I really wanted to sink my teeth into something hard like biographies, poetry and what not.
• I visited the art gallery where on display was paintings by Raja Ravi Varma and some contemporary ones. Can't remember when I went to an art gallery.
• To see something out of the ordinary is itself satisfying. I know nothing of art, have heard a few names such as Monet, not to mention Picasso and others. The visit only vetted my apetite for reading about the lives of painters and such like.
• Something is charming about books which I can never explain, though I have tried. The smell of books in libraries can't be put in words. Each book has its own smell, just like their font, printing and cover. It's a different kind of music that can be enjoyed only by a few whose minds are attuned.
• During college days I used to behave strangely when starved of feasting my eyes on words, like a drug addict deprived of his dose. If I say I have read books even during film intervals, you will consider it strange.
• I had a collection of books which I bought from roadside shops. I got Hamlet for Rs. 10 - a steal if there was one - from a seller who was certainly not Shylock.
• I sold my collection as my shelf was overcrowded and I couldn't maintain them, save for Hamlet, Julius Caeser, Old Man and the Sea, Anna Karenina and a few more.
• Anatole France said: "never lend your books to your friends, they never return them. All the books I have belong to my friends."
• At least I could have given them to my buddies. But tell me how many of my chums read books?