In the beginning it was a refuge from the world outside; a world that began where home ended. Playmates made fun of your clumsy attempts at games; you couldn’t dodge the opponents as they ran after you, you couldn’t throw the ball straight, neither hit it hard, you couldn’t outshout mates in the wild horseplay, nor pull them down in the mock show of strength. Your face turned crimson on hearing lewd invectives being bandied with abandon and you would cower in shame. But you could effortlessly finish the homework in the class itself. You could not help but answer the teacher's queries when the whole class was mum – they were so unimaginatively inane. You were mocked again for your thoroughness with academics.  Books brought an escape from this reality. They took you to lands where this bullying didn’t exist. You met kids like you, who shunned the clumsy ways of the world. In stories you found friends you had always yearned for. Books taught you to dream. They widened your imaginat

How does one get so besotted by a writer that overnight most other books in the genre turn insipid? I was visiting my wife, who was then pursuing MD. We had been married recently. She could not take leave from work. In her absence the whole day, I found myself a little lost in the company of relatives I had acquired only a few months back. She must’ve felt guilty about my lonesomeness. One evening she brought me a couple of books from the city British Council Library. One of them was a collection of W. Somerset Maugham’s short stories. I had not heard of Maugham then. I had read only a few classic authors in English. I picked up the book wearily. Book jolted me with the force of an electric current. I read it in a trance. I had not read any other book with such animated interest. Maugham, quite simply, had knocked my socks off. I had no idea what was in the book that so caught my fancy. I was only aware of the pure, unbridled pleasure his stories brought my way. I implored my wife to g

There is an ‘I’ within my head. It surveys each moment of my life. ‘I’ gives me bearing in the world. It remains alert ceaselessly. On rare occasions: under the influence of wine, indisposition of body, or sleep deprivation, it fleetingly turns groggy. I am then lost. Friends later tell me, I wasn’t myself in these moments. Psychologists call ‘I’ my ‘self’. ‘I’ tells me I am a middle-aged anaesthesiologist, of an unremarkable appearance, married for three decades, father of two well-placed children, and fairly successful in life. It has strong views on my personality too; it declares me mild-tempered, but stubborn in opinions, obsessively fond of reading, a sceptic, and a recluse at heart. ‘I’ is the object on which every experience in my life acts upon; a fall bruises my shin, wind blows my hair about, rain wets my clothes. ‘I’ is also the cause – the subject – of every activity I perform, physical or mental; I cycle for an hour every morning, I have no patience with mudd