Someone once told me, "Girls like spontaneous, impulsive guys as boyfriends, but want stable, planned and dependable guys as husbands".
To hell with girls. They are a waste of both time and money. Not going to even waste my time writing on girls/relationships/etc.
No disrespect to girls, though. Just meaning in the relationship sort-of-way. And that too for myself. Live and Let Live, I would say :)
My first love: Books. Second: good movies. Or travelling/biking maybe. But buying books/downloading movies are cheaper than 3-day road trips. :p ;). And all of these are cheaper than having a girlfriend. hu hu ha ha ha :D
Thanks to Pronoy Chopra, my old friend, who gave me the first book I read, beyond my school syllabus. That was in class 5, and the book was an abriged version of "20,000 leagues under the sea." Jules Verne and Captain Nemo became to me what Spider-man and Bat-man were to other kids.
In class 5 only, we friends even started 'APPLE' club, where we pooled in books from the entire class, and started a mini-library for our own section. 'APPLE' meant 'Akshay Prabhpreet Pronoy Love Education' club. Isn't that genius? ;)
It isn't as if I wasn't into reading before that. The day my dad used to bring home books for the next term (usually in April), I used to finish all the stories in my english textbook the same day. :) And hindi textbook the next day.
But non-course books/novels, both classics english literature and non-classic mysteries/thrillers made me look at the whole world and whole human history from a common perspective: Knowledge and Information.
I began seeing books as mediums of knowledge through which one can see/feel/experience the whole world, sitting on his/her couch.
And what better way to get to know about countries/cultures/people than to wrap the knowledge in the form of an interesting story. Even murder mysteries, slick with voilence and seduction, told me about the cities they were set in, the law-enforcement agencies in different countries, what do people there eat for breakfast/lunch, what kind of cars they drive, and much more.
All this might seem like use-less information, but if taken into considertion from a broader perspective, it gave me enough raw material to kindle my curiosity for all those ideas which define our world: History, Geography, Science, Technology, Culture, Languanges, Wars, Religion, etc. I wanted to know more and more, and started watching History Channel's documentaries, old movies, etc.
It's not like that I know a lot about the world now - it's the curiosity which I am more happy to acquire.
By God's grace, I have been able to afford and read various kinds of writing styles: at first, the 'children books' like Famous Five, Secret Seven, 'teenage stories' like Hardy boys, Nancy Drew. Then, the classics like Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Orwell, Edgar Allen Poe, the 'Magic Kingdom' of J.K. Rowling (so much so, my classmates started calling me 'potter'), the 'well researched loaded-with-history or technology' mysteries of Dan Brown, the 'heavily philosophical' but master novels by Ayn Rand, 'soulful' Paulo Coelho, and more recently, the 'emotional and touching stories based in afghanistan' by Khalid Hosseni. I read 'Shantaram' by Gregory Roberts, and that was the first true glimpse of the city that I live in now- Bombay. People have gone ga-ga over Salman Rushdie's 'The Midnight's Children', but apart from the challenge of being at pace with his writing style, the story wasn't up to my expectations.
There may be many single books (like 'The White Tiger', 'Inscrutable Americans', etc.) that I can't recall right now, but all are a part of my journey till now.
I also tried Indian authors, the IITian breed of Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh and others. They maybe good short stories for beginners, but I found that they can't be compared to stalwarts like the 'brilliant and openly blatant' Khushwant Singh, Kiran Desai, Jhump Lahiri. Ruskin Bond and R.K. Narayan may write for younger readers, but I read them after I crossed 20, and still loved the simplicity of their beautiful stories. In context of Indian Authors, Amish Tripathi with his 'Shiva Trilogy' has been an exceptional pleasant surprise to read.
I am looking forward to read Tasleema Nasrin, Arundhati Roy and the likes, not for the controversial content, but to get a feel of what drives these ladies into becoming such strongly opinionated personalities.
I used to buy pirated versions when I was in school, didn't had that much money back then. I even used to 'borrow' some books 'without permission' from my school library, because of 1-book-per-week policy; and that wasn't enough for me. Of course I 'returned' these books; Now I can afford original prints, but I do miss the time when I had so much time that I used to practically run through books - sometimes 3-4 books per week. Now I feel good even if I get to finish 1 book per week. Well, maybe the size (read 'no. of pages') of books have increased now :p :).
What a world these books create! I feel so fortunate to have this one good habit of reading. I sincerely do wish that every good friend of mine reads something or the other, every now and then. So much better that discussing MTV Roadies auditions or gossiping about relationships.
My longest relationship has been with books, till now. And I don't think books can 'betray' you in any way. :p
Well, about my other love, 'Good Movies'; well that's a story for some other time. Sidney Sheldon's "Angel of the Dark" is waiting for me :) :).
P.S: The only thing I wanted to do in my teenage, after 1:00 AM in the night, after bolting the door shut from inside, after switching on my room's light, (or candle light, in case of no electricity) and putting a towel along the door's bottom crevice, was not what you call 'naughty': I used to love 'reading' books worth 'reading', not 'see' books worth 'seeing'. Oh wait, magazines can't be termed as books, can they? :p
To hell with girls. They are a waste of both time and money. Not going to even waste my time writing on girls/relationships/etc.
No disrespect to girls, though. Just meaning in the relationship sort-of-way. And that too for myself. Live and Let Live, I would say :)
My first love: Books. Second: good movies. Or travelling/biking maybe. But buying books/downloading movies are cheaper than 3-day road trips. :p ;). And all of these are cheaper than having a girlfriend. hu hu ha ha ha :D
Thanks to Pronoy Chopra, my old friend, who gave me the first book I read, beyond my school syllabus. That was in class 5, and the book was an abriged version of "20,000 leagues under the sea." Jules Verne and Captain Nemo became to me what Spider-man and Bat-man were to other kids.
In class 5 only, we friends even started 'APPLE' club, where we pooled in books from the entire class, and started a mini-library for our own section. 'APPLE' meant 'Akshay Prabhpreet Pronoy Love Education' club. Isn't that genius? ;)
It isn't as if I wasn't into reading before that. The day my dad used to bring home books for the next term (usually in April), I used to finish all the stories in my english textbook the same day. :) And hindi textbook the next day.
But non-course books/novels, both classics english literature and non-classic mysteries/thrillers made me look at the whole world and whole human history from a common perspective: Knowledge and Information.
I began seeing books as mediums of knowledge through which one can see/feel/experience the whole world, sitting on his/her couch.
And what better way to get to know about countries/cultures/people than to wrap the knowledge in the form of an interesting story. Even murder mysteries, slick with voilence and seduction, told me about the cities they were set in, the law-enforcement agencies in different countries, what do people there eat for breakfast/lunch, what kind of cars they drive, and much more.
All this might seem like use-less information, but if taken into considertion from a broader perspective, it gave me enough raw material to kindle my curiosity for all those ideas which define our world: History, Geography, Science, Technology, Culture, Languanges, Wars, Religion, etc. I wanted to know more and more, and started watching History Channel's documentaries, old movies, etc.
It's not like that I know a lot about the world now - it's the curiosity which I am more happy to acquire.
By God's grace, I have been able to afford and read various kinds of writing styles: at first, the 'children books' like Famous Five, Secret Seven, 'teenage stories' like Hardy boys, Nancy Drew. Then, the classics like Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Orwell, Edgar Allen Poe, the 'Magic Kingdom' of J.K. Rowling (so much so, my classmates started calling me 'potter'), the 'well researched loaded-with-history or technology' mysteries of Dan Brown, the 'heavily philosophical' but master novels by Ayn Rand, 'soulful' Paulo Coelho, and more recently, the 'emotional and touching stories based in afghanistan' by Khalid Hosseni. I read 'Shantaram' by Gregory Roberts, and that was the first true glimpse of the city that I live in now- Bombay. People have gone ga-ga over Salman Rushdie's 'The Midnight's Children', but apart from the challenge of being at pace with his writing style, the story wasn't up to my expectations.
There may be many single books (like 'The White Tiger', 'Inscrutable Americans', etc.) that I can't recall right now, but all are a part of my journey till now.
I also tried Indian authors, the IITian breed of Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh and others. They maybe good short stories for beginners, but I found that they can't be compared to stalwarts like the 'brilliant and openly blatant' Khushwant Singh, Kiran Desai, Jhump Lahiri. Ruskin Bond and R.K. Narayan may write for younger readers, but I read them after I crossed 20, and still loved the simplicity of their beautiful stories. In context of Indian Authors, Amish Tripathi with his 'Shiva Trilogy' has been an exceptional pleasant surprise to read.
I am looking forward to read Tasleema Nasrin, Arundhati Roy and the likes, not for the controversial content, but to get a feel of what drives these ladies into becoming such strongly opinionated personalities.
I used to buy pirated versions when I was in school, didn't had that much money back then. I even used to 'borrow' some books 'without permission' from my school library, because of 1-book-per-week policy; and that wasn't enough for me. Of course I 'returned' these books; Now I can afford original prints, but I do miss the time when I had so much time that I used to practically run through books - sometimes 3-4 books per week. Now I feel good even if I get to finish 1 book per week. Well, maybe the size (read 'no. of pages') of books have increased now :p :).
What a world these books create! I feel so fortunate to have this one good habit of reading. I sincerely do wish that every good friend of mine reads something or the other, every now and then. So much better that discussing MTV Roadies auditions or gossiping about relationships.
My longest relationship has been with books, till now. And I don't think books can 'betray' you in any way. :p
Well, about my other love, 'Good Movies'; well that's a story for some other time. Sidney Sheldon's "Angel of the Dark" is waiting for me :) :).
P.S: The only thing I wanted to do in my teenage, after 1:00 AM in the night, after bolting the door shut from inside, after switching on my room's light, (or candle light, in case of no electricity) and putting a towel along the door's bottom crevice, was not what you call 'naughty': I used to love 'reading' books worth 'reading', not 'see' books worth 'seeing'. Oh wait, magazines can't be termed as books, can they? :p
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