I was walking past the dining table in a hurry yesterday when the words printed on the shopping bag of a bookstore caught my eye: “you can’t buy happiness, but you can buy books. And that’s kind of the same thing”. It stopped me in my tracks momentarily, and I smiled as I read the words that were so simply yet well put, words that resonate perfectly with the way I feel about reading.
Books have been a constant presence in my life, from the age of 5 when my father started taking me on my weekly trips to the Gymkhana library. I would fight with him to stake claim on the maximum number of the limited books we could borrow on the library card for myself, and spend the next week devouring them, anxious to return to the library to borrow more. Growing up with that passion for reading, I have never been able to understand why so many people don’t read. I’ve always felt sorry for and a little baffled by them, that they are missing out on something amazing (not so differently from how I feel about vegetarians). I wonder – what do they do when they are waiting at a doctor’s office, or aboard a train, or sitting with a steaming cup of coffee on a sunny winter day?
Books have a magical and powerful way of taking you away from where you are. They have been my ever faithful companions, whether in helping dispel loneliness or boredom, being an integral part of my bedtime routine, or simply keeping me company wherever I am. Books have been able to take me into their world and touch me in the way that little else can, even songs or comparatively more visual movies or television shows. It is for this reason that when I was moving back home after college, packing up and being unable to bring home all my books was far more harrowing than having to leave behind any other possessions. It’s for the same reason that I might think twice about buying a piece of clothing or new shoes but never about a new book, that I find no place as calm and soothing as a bookstore or a library. Believing in the power of books, it has saddened me immensely to see the slow demise of books and bookstores, as attention spans weaken and everything migrates online.
This same love for books sparked in me a desire to work in publishing, a niggling desire that persisted for several years before I finally, recently decided to pay heed to it and take the plunge. It comes from a desire to work in a space that will allow me to bring great books to others, just as someone brought to me, idealistic as the thought may be. Also – a job that allows me to read for a living? I can’t think of a better way to spend my time.
While my love for reading has existed for a long time, it slowly created a corresponding love for writing, one that I discovered, ironically, after I left the liberal arts world of Vassar. This second, newer love comes from a desire to write something that will touch someone, just as countless books have done to me. I have been fortunate enough to experience and appreciate the potential of books, which has left me wanting to contribute to that world. With writing, I feel like I can do something impactful, perhaps more so than anything else I feel capable of.
Whether I’ll actually be able to do that is yet to be seen, but that’s a different matter.