Great things are often said about the joy in creating a new music or anew art even a new story. But little is said about the ecstasy one find in reading. World has often undermined the delight in reading. I do not remember since when but books have been my biggest solace. Losing myself in the woods of pages, wandering through the lush of words I often find my favorite niche .The world of fantasy is my greatest escapade. As I continue to glare at the world through someone else’s imagination, I can see the myriads of light. Some are bright orange and red all happy, others are grey,and misty again some are tainted with rain drops. Of course it has to be multicolor. Fantasies are nothing but the image of the society. It just portrays the happiness, grief, lust, cruelty of the real world. Giving refuge to almost all the miseries of life books often carry us to that corner of the world where we can almost live another life. When you read something you are stopped, the moment is stayed, you can sometimes be there more fully than you can in your real life..When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it – or rather, it is like living it. The characters can talk to me unabashedly and when I turn the last page I have that feeling of losing a friend. But wait, I can still pick it up again, open it again .The words won’t change, they’ll still be there. I can meet them all over again, and they can meet me, and everything we have will come back
So I have blushed as Rhett said to Scarlett “You should be kissed and by someone who knows how.” And felt dejected when he uttered, “My dear, I don’t give a damn”. I lived the guilt of Amir and plight of the Kite Runner, Hassan,“a thousand times over”. As a teen I often dreamed of Hogwarts where I would be called one day through the owl post(pretty immature for today’s teen I guess). I have suffered emotion of gut-wrenching to heartache to pure joy as I read through the intertwining of the lives of Marium and Laila in their struggle to survive during the turbulent years of Afghanistan and often felt blessed for my life which is so different from their. I learnt to decode mysteries with Robert Langdon .Whereas Rebecca taught me the essence of absence. Again I learnt to see the world in an unprejudiced way through the eyes of Jean Louise Finch aka Scout. I have not yet read “Go set A watchman” in the fear that what if Scout do not grow up to be like I imagined. Why only books even in Calvin and Hobbes have taught me important lessons as they talk about life in their terms. I have found the most innocent philosophers of life.
To sum up I can say as some wise man has quoted, “Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation… A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold”. Let us spread the happiness and the company because a book will never let you feel alone.
