‘All the animals boarded the train and the station-master, the Monkey, flagged it off.’ Thus began the little girl’s tale of love for stories, perched on her Grandpa’s shoulders. He would take her for his evening walks and narrate absurd animal tales complete with perfect sound effects to make her see the monkey wear a uniform, and birds flitting in and out of the train windows. He hooked her to stories. Thirty-five years later, when this little girl’s relatives gathered, they had a single common memory of her, ‘You used to corner us for a kahani. You could never have enough.’ 

So the little girl devoured stories. She bullied her aunts into telling one whenever they visited. She pried her mother’s eyes open during her siesta and pleaded for a story. She even sat with rapt attention when the helper related ‘real’ anecdotes of ghosts in the mountains. Every year, on Diwali, she and her brother cornered their father for a story, and he obliged with the same one for years. Yet, each year listening to the tale of Sher uncle taking the bear cubs to the moon in an aeroplane, where candy trees grew created the best memory for years to come. 

All these years later, I, the little girl, am still hungry for stories. Grandpa left me with insurmountable joy of discovering new tales with each turn of the page. It was never forced; I never attended any reading classes. I doubt if there were any back then. Yet we read. My parents never monitored what I was reading and never thrust ‘virtuous’ books in my hands. When it came to the rows of shelves in the library, I was a free bird. I carried back whatever caught my fancy without checking the appropriateness in terms of content or age. The girl who got caught with a ‘questionable’ book open between her biology book in grade 11? Yep, me. Yet, no hell broke loose. The mother casually told her to wait a while if she could. The girl went back to reading.

Around the same time, we had this friendly rental service for comics. The magazine guy came loaded with bags full of books and rang the bicycle bell with an air of urgency. We would rush out and grab the latest Phantom comic, Mandrake or Lot Pot. Middle school brought with it the discovery of authors like Emily Brontë, Jane Austen, and an abridged version of Oliver Twist. There were no star stickers put against my name for completing any non-existent ‘class reading challenges. ‘ It was just a natural thing to do. 

Oliver Twist made my cry. Pride and Prejudice gave butterflies in the stomach, and around first year of college, Dracula gave me sleepless nights. As I grew, books grew with me. But then, with passing years, somehow they got left behind. A decade whizzed past with very few books reaching out to me, and then one day, while I was caught between a loop of soiled nappies and baby-food bowls, a package arrived – the first four Harry Potter books! It was the best Rakhi gift I could have ever hoped for. The nappies and the food bowl circle widened to include books in it. And for the next few days (and nights) I was lost to the world. Harry Potter set me back on track. Books started trickling in again. 

Years later, I chanced upon a writer’s workshop thanks to my brother’s mail. The organisers, a leading Children’s Books Publishing House, sent the participants a list of children’s books. That list induced frantic book purchases. Before that my only encounter with children’s literature was as a mum but not as a reader. That workshop took us out of the closet. It wasn’t odd to love books meant for toddlers anymore. I stopped pretending to be reading only for my kids. And that led me to the wondrous world of children’s books. I could spend hours gazing at the gorgeous picture books in bookstores. I found new friends who shared the enthusiasm. It was like rediscovering myself. 

A few years later, the journey took a new turn with the setting up of a Library in my hometown, Faridabad. It all started with two things. One, I saw my boys getting affected by books just as I was a child. The older one had once remarked after reading Talking of Muskaan, ‘this needs to be read by my friends. We all go through different trials each day, Ma. It is kind of reassuring to know that kids out there are fighting similar battles against different pressures.’  From Wimpy kid to Percy Jackson series, they read it all. However, most of their peers never went beyond text-books. That needed to change. And libraries are best suited for such tasks. 

Second thing that propelled me to working towards creating a library was the magic of accessibility. I regularly take piles of books to my mom’s place for her helpers’ kids. No one reads to them. No one encourages them to pick a book. Yet, one day when I stepped in, I saw a little girl with a picture book, running her finger over the text, trying to join letters into words. It was no rocket science. She didn’t go to any Phonetics class, a reading group, or some such workshop. All she did was listen to the books coaxing her to flip them open. When she comes over to my place, the excitement in her eyes on seeing towering shelves full of books is infectious. She sparked the idea of a library for everyone in a town that was completely devoid of books. 

Reading transforms. Not just the reader but also the world around them. It is almost like a cloud being lifted and a colour being added with each page. It could be a simple picture book or a profound philosophy book exploring the meaning of life. Each one of them changes the course of our life, even if it is a tiny bump to a different direction. It has no age. I have seen people become avid readers at the ripe age of 42 and toddlers that can barely speak coherent sentences chanting, ‘Book! Book!’ until the parent gives into reading the worn out page for the 12643^rd time. 

Each day I slide a book towards an unsuspecting child. Some throw it back and I patiently try another one. Some get hooked and before the parents can realise what hit them, they are paying the bills for books that seem to never stop tiptoeing into their homes. And when someone pulls a book down from the shelves at the library, a dream of a better world takes a more concrete shape. That someone could be anyone; books do not discriminate. The young man who helps me with managing the home loves reading Premchand’s stories and Amar Chitra Katha. He has barely been to primary school. With time, he has taught himself to string the broken letters together to form stories. That is the power of words, dreams, and that insatiable thirst for more tales. 

We all crave for stories, some have found theirs, and some are still looking. Eventually, if we do not give up on books, our story finds us just like it found a little girl perched on her nana’s shoulders, or the little boy who made his mother read a dinosaur book for the millionth time, or the helper who, while the food cooks, finds his stories in the latest Amar Chitra Katha that he found, or like the young man who rediscovered reading after a gap of a few years and now is found sitting in a cafe near his college reading Murakami and hoping for his bank balance to be just enough to pay for the vanilla shake. Our stories eventually come to us; all we need to do is stay open to books, keep the shelves full, and the head empty enough for the story to find its way. 

Note: This piece was found in a long lost folder. I have no idea why it was written or for whom. So if someone out there finds a link to the same, inbox me please!