BOOKS RULE, O K.

 

BOOKS RULE, O K.

I am an addicted news-worm. It annoys my daughter, (“The news hasn’t changed since the last half hour, has it?”) She is a sports addict. She shares the living room T V with me. So, I bought a T V for my bedroom. However, watching T V in the bedroom does not compare remotely to the pleasure of communal watching: squabbling over political opinions, taking tea breaks and realising how, we in this household, with all its shortcomings, flares- up of temper, avoidance of chores, not respecting private spaces… still prefer being together (most of the time) than in our separate ivory towers. This applies only to those past teen age. The teen has original methods of adult-avoidance.

               In Thalassery, where I grew up, we had one radio with an uncertain reception. I listened to All India Radio, Kozhikode and Delhi, and my cousin, Mani, had little time for it. She wanted filmi music. When things got unsolvable, I fell back on my reading habit. Books have got me through a great many tough times. I thank my Achan who quietly descanted all sorts of books on me without my noticing. He did not consider my age or abilities at any time; the books were his reading. I remember reading (if you can call struggling through pages of complicated new ideas, reading) Bertrand Russell’s CONQUEST OF HAPPINESS and MARRIAGE AND MORALS when I was fifteen years old. For dessert I had school girl stories by Angela Brazil, which I hid from Achan. Hockey Pam and Netball Nellie reigned. H G Wells’s tome, the HISTORY OF THE WORLD put all of it in perspective.

               By the time Achan gave me FREEDOM AND ORGANISATION in two hefty parts three years later, I was a convert. I remember C E M Joad, in passing – he too was part of my enforced education, until I got used to abstractions and began to have my own opinions.

               Today my daughter is in the West End at a musical, my son is submerged in Mathematics scripts to mark and my granddaughter is doing her usual distancing from all things adult. This involves many hours of sleeping and not responding to being called.

               So, books – in the plural, both in soft backs and on Kindle. ANARCHY by William Darlymple, discussing as it does the inglorious British rule in India, is for me, very personal. It was the time when my father went to jail for his views, war raged in Europe and in S E Asia, and I was seven years old. There was rice rationing, sugar rationing, cloth rationing ---. Kerosene was difficult to find. We were piss-poor with our only wage-earner incarcerated at His Majesty’s pleasure

Exams were cancelled because there was a paper shortage, hip hip hurray. The house went vegetarian for survival, Velyamma grew spinach, Okra and Brinjals in our garden.  Velyamma, sitting on a rickety bench on the veranda, counting her coins, which she kept in her pan box, was a regular sight.

By the time Achan was released from jail two years later, Velyamma had stomach ulcers.

She died soon after. She was my surrogate mother.