The Book, the Rain, the Boy

There’s nothing like curling up to a good book, some piping hot tea and some pakodas, on a rainy day. The rains may have left us home bound but books have a way of setting us free, letting our minds soar and our imagine take it own course.

In those moments, you find yourself enamoured by those words that they come alive, forming a picture in our minds, playing themselves out as go through them. Those words create a movie, one in which you are totally immersed in. No 3-D or 4-D or any D could provide us with the same experience. It’s a movie in which you co-star, you play an integral part. Books maybe adapted to films but there’s nothing like the film that comes alive in your mind (and I am not talking of that type of film).

If you just remain silent and stop thinking out loud, books have a way of reading themselves to you. It’s like authors themselves are narrating it to you, telling you about the interesting developments and plot points. I could swear that Michelle Obama was narrating to me about her life in Southside Chicago, before she met Barrac Obama, before she became the First Lady.

In those pages you can be anyone you want to be. You can go on a quest with the Fellowship to destroy the One Ring, or tag along with Frodo and Sam and Gollum as they head to Mordor to destroy the ring where it was forged. Or travel through the wardrobe into the fantastic world of Narnia, or through a wrinkle in time to the many earths. You could be a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardery, learning to cast spells and defence against the Dark Arts. You could be spending the summer with Ellio and Oliver and witness their romance blossom, and the incident with the peach. You could be Simon, patiently sitting on that Ferris Wheel, eagerly waiting to meet Blue. You try to learn what makes Ganesh Gaitonde click and who is his third baap. You could be following the case of Nick Dunne and Amy Dunne, and go that bloody bitch when you realise the twist in the tale. You could be in the same room as Fr Mirren and Fr Karrac, as they exorcise the demon Pazuzu from Reagan. Or you could find yourself standing in the Red Room of pain. 

You could be anyone you want to be, you could be anywhere where you choose to be. In those pages you find yourself in magical worlds which you could only imagine of, you find yourself in worlds you only read of, places you don’t have access to, places you’ll never be able to see, journeys you’ll never be able to undertake, to embark on, adventures you’ll never be able to go on. Books have a magical way of bringing them to life, a companion, a friend, opening us to new worlds, which would otherwise would have  not been possible.

Books form a perfect companion on a rain day, when you’re holed up at home with a book for company with an accompaniment of some tea and pakodas.