Each book in my library has a unique appeal. I never walk across a book-shelf without stealing a glance at the spines of the stacked volumes. Often, I linger over them, when such a fancy seizes me and the moments of my life are not hemmed in by the demands of a workaday routine. Sometimes a chance remembrance brings a whiff of a scintillating experience I have had reading a book. I then head towards them with a zeal. I dive into my collection, one genre leads to another, a book of an author reminds me of his other works, glimpse of a book peeping from the rear prompts me to bring down the row in the front; I sit surrounded by mounds of books, pick one from the pile and live again the time I had spent with the book – years, perhaps decades, ago.   Words of the author breath life in to the inert pages of a book. This is the character a book is born with. Each reader brings to a book, a world all his own, because no two individuals are alike. With every new reader book unfolds a n

  Neurophysician, whom I consulted for backache, ordered MRI scan of the spine. Scan threatens to reveal much more than I had expected to learn. Spine is the seat of a man’s character. It is subjected to superlative praise and humiliating slanders in social parlance. Ignominy of being called spineless – although, often behind your back – chafes endlessly. A ramrod spine hugely elevates the stature of the person. Spine bears the weight of the body and the spirit, alike. My changing spine might presage remodelling of my nature. This worries me. Radiologist said, my spine has lost the natural curves. Does my straightened spine foreshadow a staid, unchanging behaviour, robbed of its naturally meandering nature? This condemns me to an insipid life of inflexible dreariness. Wise aver that chameleonic personality is a blessing in our world. Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz, German mathematician, and philosopher of early eighteenth century, opined that we live in the best of all possible wor

A friend, now nearing sixty like me, has had a guilt-laden conscience for decades. Her daughter who is a successful professional, married, and in a well-paid job, blames her mother for what she perceives as failings in her nature: fastidious personal habits, intolerance for views of others, inability to trust friends, capricious mood swings, and even her obsession with eating healthy food. Her main grouse – reinforced by similar opinion of a psychotherapist she often visits – is that my friend did not devote enough time to her when she was young, as she valued her job more. The friend cannot rid herself of the remorse - Were it not for her demanding job, would her daughter have grown into a happier, more contended, and a self-assured person? Children spawn a new life for their parents. Birth of a child is an epochal moment in their lives. Young child is dependent on the parent for all her needs for a long time, stretching for years, perhaps the longest in the biological world. It is th