Saturday, March 31, 2012

“There is no friend as loyal as a book” ― Ernest Hemingway

I started liking books since my childhood, same for most of the people I guess. I used to read them over and over and so never ran out of books to read. This compelled my mother to hide the books during my exam time as I used to perform poorly. I remember sometimes I could discover where she hid them and its feeling was similar to climbing a tough peak.

Then I grew up (my age increased). I started finding my hiding place inside them. To be very frank, I am a dull human being. I sometimes fail to tune with the outside world. So, for my peace of mind I learnt to turn to them whenever I feel lonely. It never disappointed me.

I came to college. I became exposed to many aspects of life which I did not know of. I became aware of incompleteness of life and the necessity of it. And I dived deeper into the so-called ocean of life.

At first I couldn't enjoy. I thought its because I was learning how to swim.

Many days went by. Few moments of joy, some heart-breaking and a lot of indifference happened to me. And now towards the end of my college, as I am trying to evaluate what I was doing in this ocean, I realised that what I learnt is simply how to dance at the small waves and avoiding the larger ones. What it felt to me was something similar to a subject, student of which can either perform as a general graduate or can teach that subject to produce similar students.

Now once again, I looked back at the books. Whenever I felt lack of fulfilment from the 'real' world, I turned back to it. To my joy, I found when almost everything has changed in my life, these fellows are still loyal to me, rather in the time of need its usefulness is more felt and it becomes irreplaceable.

I would like to think that, one of my favourites, Wordsworth has written the poem thinking about the books instead of the daffodils. They only truly have given me the "bliss of solitude."

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