Pleasure of printed words over moving frames

I wish I wasn't so passionate about those 24 frames, I could have written this chapter with much clarity. However, I will try and analyse my intrinsic feelings related to a story presented in both the forms. I first watched this film called " The English Patient" some five years back. I fell in love with it; beautiful, soulful, romantic, aesthetic and grey. I watched it thrice, both by deliberation and chance. Despite the fact that I knew it was originally a novel, I dared not to read it thinking I may loose the love I had developed for the film. And so it happened one day, I chanced upon the Ondaatje novel in a bookstore selling second hand books. I got it for Rs. 50, and could not resist buying it. In a way I was sold to the price of the book (and my innermost temptation to read this masterpiece). 

The first thing I did to prevent myself from reading it was to keep it on my shelf with the cover clearly visible. Yes, it had the film's poster on it, much to my dismay, or may be relief as I hate original coverpages being replaced by the film shots once a novel gets converted to a film. I was shifting between temptation and loyality. Temptation of reading the book and loyality towards the beautifully made film. 

Finally, I read the book. I was a stupified moth. What the visuals of the burnt English patient could not instill in me, the few lines describing war, Hana's reasons for being in the dilapiated building with the English patient did it. (...to be contd.)

Demise of a Library

Writing first or reading?

I would like to believe that the latter comes before. But then, there's no theory supporting that.

 
I started reading, seriously reading, only when I reached sixth standard(was it too late?). There was just one place where I could get good English language books in the little town I come from. Two actually.  The district library - redundant with an old librarian sleeping away to glory on his table awaiting someone to walk in through that age old door, and the personal library of my English teacher. The district library was right in front of my school, and thanks to my regular ventures (into that abandoned haunted dilapidated storehouse), I used to get more than one book a card. The first book I ever issued was Alaxander Pushkin's prose works. I tried reading Dante; too much for a 6th standard kid. I never read Comedy of Errors again; I should however, do it at the earliest possible. Then, one fine day I heard of this dark writer called 'Kafka'. The sound of his name, I must admit was like a titillation. K-A-F-K-A. 

I HAD to read him. I picked up 'Metamorphosis'. Damn! Nobody told me he wrote horror! Eeeew..creepy! That was in seventh standard. This wasn't quite progressing very well, if you know what I mean? I did not understand the books I was reading. And I understood very well, the fact that the stories, books I was reading had some underlying politics. Something I was unable to discover. I did not know how to read between lines as yet.What I knew was that, Metamorphosis was much beyond a man turning a bug. But WHAT? 

I, naturally, did not give up. I shifted to Charles Dickens - someone I should have begun my journey with. And R.K. Narayan. May be I should have read Gone with the Wind, which I did eventually, becoming so engrossed into the Civil War that I would forget to even eat. Most importantly, I would spend hours in bathroom flipping through pages of the book. My mother naturally was worried or may be just curious that I was exploring my early sexuality inside. Instead, I was creating a strategy. My aim was to finish reading the Huckleberry Finns, Robinson Crusoes, Mario Puzos, Agatha Christies and similar literatures before I finish seventh standard. I felt I was lagging far behind compared  probably to children in the cosmopolitan cities. Hence I read like crazy. For me that was the only solution to set foot in the wider world, which I wanted to very badly. Eight standard for me would be to re-read what I could not finish the previous year. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Kafka etc. - the 'heavy' ones. But then I got hooked on to "Oprah Winfrey Show" and her book club, and made a list of books I wanted to read that year. Well, it included people like Maya Angelous and Toni Morrison. No book store, library in the town had any of the Bluest Eyes, Sulas or  Tar Babys. I saw Toni Morrison on television, and madly fell in love with her magnetic personality. I saw Oprah and Morrison shedding tears over their discussions of struggle and I wept with them. The more I wanted to read Morrison, the more difficult it was becoming to get hold of any of her titles.

Soon a teacher joined our school to teach English, and I befriended her. She seemed to like me as a student and I had one day gone to her house to do some work on our school magazine. That's when I saw her personal library. I got hooked again. She would lend me a book every week. I had the independence to choose, but she had the freedom to recommend. It became a mutual process till the next four years, till such time I shifted to Delhi.

The first time I landed in Delhi I was going through the roadside vendors and saw 'Beloved' by who else, TONI MORRISON! I bought it immediately. I later on figured out that it was a pirated book. Piracy: a concept I knew about, but did not think it was practiced in broad daylight in the heart of the city. I had bought the book from Connaught Place. I have never ever bought a pirated book after that. Five years after that incident, I was to join the publishing industry despite dreaming and working for four years to become a journalist and filmmaker.

This year when I went to my small town, almost after five years, I saw that the District Library no longer existed. There was an auditorium built into it. I just wished it had shifted elsewhere and had not been brought down altogether. Otherwise, it increases one more tasks on my personal agenda. My parents wanted to have a library, always,  but never had the funds to build it. Wanted to gift it as their 25th anniversary present. Not possible, I overestimated my prowess to earn and save. The anniversary is next year. 

Another thing happened this year. My English teacher who had almost become a mother to me in years called me up to say," I am in a bookstore. Recommend me a book I should not miss"

" Milan Kundera's Immortality," I said.

WHO is GOD?

"The writer or the publisher?" 

"Sucks! The question sucks! You should not ask chicken and egg sort of questions. And please do not bring God in the deal."