Let Holmes and Watson teach you

Books are magical. Every book has something to tell me and I am hardly the sort who will snootily say, ‘No, no, this one isn’t for me.’ This, however, doesn’t mean that I will keep reading only politically-motivated non-fiction that every politician and every retired bureaucrat seems to be eager to push… or keep picking up only third-rate thrillers that a lot of Indians writing in English are throwing at us… or fall for yet another book pretending to be seeped in mythology or history just because Bollywood has decided to convert the story of some Rani into a movie. There are times when I read thrillers back-to-back and then even my burps and farts start behaving like secret agents looking for sleeper cells everywhere. There are times when I plod through utterly boring and unsubstantiated stories claiming to be true and from the corridors of power.

This time, however, I have decided not to let publishing trends get the better of me. The three books that I have chosen over others are:

Mystical tales for a magical life by Shubha Vilas

Mystical tales for a magical life_Shubha Vilas

This is because I have not read many stories based on our scriptures from the Vedic times. I believe that these stories from the epics and the Puranas have something to tell even the person living in modern India. As I flipped the pages of this book, the first thing that caught my attention were the number of little black boxes that did not seem to be a part of the story. They seemed to be the thoughts of the writer seeking solutions and answers in the story that was being narrated. As I had opened a page where the story had Krishna, Arjun, and other warriors pursuing horses racing away and the chase stops at a spot not far from the shore where a Rishi sat. The black boxed blurb here read: ‘The narrower we freeze the dimension of our thoughtful absorption, the lesser the broad range of disturbances will affect us.’ The fast paced narrative had suddenly halted and the story went on to tell us what the Rishi was doing. The focus had shifted from a broad canvas of a chase to life that embraced a slow pace and was suddenly full of minute details. This facet of story-telling immediately fascinated me and I decided to go for this book.

Mann ki Baat – a social revolution on radio

I know that I will not be reading this book from cover to cover but I also know that I will keep coming back to its pages again and again. The reason is simple. PM Modi’s monthly radio addresses are full of perspectives that are not only relevant but are full of details that have been painstakingly researched. This book is like a vital footnote of history as it unfolded… and we have chapters talking about the crisis in Yemen and a few pages later we have the PM expressing his opinion on khadi for fashion! This book doesn’t just have insights into demonetization and clean India but also on yoga and the art of gifting books. We have his words on the dark days of emergency hobnobbing with his appeal to encourage a cleaner and more hygienic future. The seven hundred pages have snippets of the thoughts of a PM from October 2014 to November 2018… and this book is more than a treasure.

The miracle morning by Hal Erod

No, I’m definitely not the sort who shies away from ‘how-to’ books every once in a while. I have scanned a lot of reviews as I searched for something that will make me get up early in the morning and will tell me the ‘not-so-obvious’ secret guaranteed to transform my life. This is the book that I hope to finish reading first as I am like anyone else and want more from my life. I too need to know the secret of harnessing the powers within… secrets that have evaded me for decades now.

On reading habits

Yes, I have been schooled to believe in text-books and for many years I used to stand in book stores filled with hundreds of attractive fiction titles and come out carrying yet another text-book. I always envied my class-mates who talked about having their own personal collection of fiction… until one fine day I decided to silence my engineered impulses to buy text-books and bought my first Enid Blyton. From that day my life had Biggles, Gimlet, the famous five, spies, fighters, adventurers, Graham Bells, Marso Polos, Casanovas, Lolitas, and plenty of tall, dark, and handsome hulks along with mesmerizing beauties for company. I was continually going in and out of animal farms or on a boat with some old man that Hemingway brought along… and yes, school vacations meant that I could converse with Dr No, go along with the romantic coupling imagined by Gulshan Nanda, or even do some hard-core spying with characters from Ibne Safi’s books. Those were times when I suddenly realized that my essays had a sharper edge to them and my teachers seemed happier… even my math teacher once told me, ‘You seem to be solving geometry problems faster than even I do. Do you practice at home?’

I replied, ‘I have Holmes and Watson to teach me, sir.’ Need I say more on reading habits? Go ahead and #ReadBooks.