Confessions of a book lover: The Online Editorial Diaries

Chapter 6: I love books. Print then and now. And digital on my Macbook. It does not matter. I love the fragrance of a new book with that smell of ink and the sharp edge of paper that leaves a razor incision on your finger while turning pages. As a book lover, you love that edge dont you? But more than that, I love the rich aroma of a second-hand book with its yellowed pages, and, maybe, underlined text or notes from the previous owner. 

A good book is so much like falling in love. Where you wait to find free time - to read. You wait to see what happens next. And then that indescribable despair while nearing the final chapter of a great book. And wondering about life after that moment. The bland days when real life steps in and the only way to escape is to go for a good movie. Or find the next great writer.

To date, there are books I never want to end. For those of you who plan to write a book, expect a reader like me. And yes, readers notice only one thing. How the plot flows like a river and takes you in its wake.

The flying book

There are two distinct memories when I was in fifth grade. One day, I went to the school library and was overcome by a wave of depression that I would die before I read all the books in the world. The feeling passed within 10 minutes when I found the next book I wanted to read.

Another time, I was reading and could hear my mother calling me for lunch. Several times. But the book was more important. Her voice came closer and closer and suddenly the book was taken out of my hand and flung out of the balcony. We lived on the first floor then - so I ran down the stairs and casually picked up the book like it was the most normal thing for books to fly out of balconies. But my first shameless instinct was to see that the pages were not affected - libraries were strict about these things, you see.

During my teens, while other girls wanted pocket money to buy make-up, I was saving away to buy new or second-hand books, the latest Cadbury or Amul chocolate and visit the I Love Books annual fair at Churchgate. Being an avid reader himself, my father encouraged my love of books and subscribed to Readers Digest. He also bought me their big condensed volumes (10 books in one volume and such) as well as Time/Life books and encouraged me to enter essay competitions (I won them to his delight).

And that is when I read a book that was to change my life forever. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach. A book where I felt the world slip far away from me and pivot my whole thinking of life. 

The road to Kimiyaa

To top my mother's woes, an uncle lent me a book on speed reading. As a result, though I generally topped in class, I studied only night before the exams as I spent most of my time reading books hidden inside the text book. This terrible habit led to lesser marks by the time I reached 10th grade as I could no longer study the bigger textbooks overnight. Not that it made any difference. Reading had engulfed my life.

Did I like any genre? Well, I learned over time that I loved dry humour from P.G. Wodehouse, mystery from Agatha Christie, the legal side from Perry Mason and then, besides the classics, I found some great writers like Paul Gallico and poets like Carl Sandberg while doing my final year in English Literature.

As I had a penchant to write poetry and get it published in the college magazine, I simultaneously experimented with Haiku and parodies and devoured all kinds of poetry. And I also fell in love with metaphysical poetry, especially, John Donne and The William Blake (found a reference book in the British Council Library that had the drawings and engravings that Blake was also famous for).

The final year of college was the most delicious year for a bookworm like me - imagine all your classes in your favourite subject? This was also the time I stumbled across the stories of alchemists - little knowing that one day, I would set up my own company and name it Kimiyaa (alkimiyaa in Arabic is the original word for alchemy). 

The business of editing

By now, it was obvious to the whole world that I was getting into a career in writing. There were no plans of journalism though - my dreams of being a copywriter landed me a job as a researcher at Asthra, a tiny ad agency at Esplanade Mansion in Colaba (they offered me tag lines as carrots to get me in). The work made me fall in love with BusinessWorld, a fortnightly magazine in India (then with the Ananda Bazar Group) because of the way they wrote business for the lay person to read. This led to me stumbling into journalism.

Strangely, I next got into Onlooker, a political magazine and worked at Free Press Journal as a sub-editor but wrote book reviews (what else?) and art reviews. While I did not enjoy editing the political stories, I loved reviewing the books and interviewing artists like Laxman Shrestha and Mukesh Parpia at my beloved Jehangir Art Gallery as the bonus. But I got tired of the political stories and moved to BusinessWorld. Where I learned the true business of editing and writing. Both. My initial stories had more red ink from the Assistant Chief sub-editor's pen than black ink. I felt I was back in school but did I learn how to write better? 100%. However, my career took me away from writing poetry.

But left the book addict untouched. The best places to buy books in Bombay in the 80s included:

• Kings Circle - oh, the joy of wading through the hundreds of secondhand books on the road and the wily booksellers who raised the price if they saw the gleam in your eye. A friend trained me to not look desperate or shout loudly when I got an amazing book (after all pocket money was limited so I soon mastered the fine art of bargaining).
• The road between Fort and Churchgate
• Strand Book Stall (sadly shut down in 2018 but was The go-to-place for book lovers and Literature students)
• Smokers Corner: You haven't lived in Bombay if you have not bought a second-hand book from this place. (the bookshop is actually in front of the stairs of an office building and we were also able to get old copies of international magazines as well as the crazy Mad Comics).
• The New & Secondhand Bookstore near Metro Cinema: a book lover’s delight. Then the books were actually piled from the floor to the ceiling. The secondhand books I bought in Bombay before it became Mumbai have travelled with me over the years across homes and cities and hold a special place in my home to date.

My top list

Over the years, this love of buying books continued when I came to the Gulf. It was hard to find a good bookshop in the 90s but we were blessed with the portacabin library at the Dubai International Arts Centre in Jumeirah and life was just perfect after that.

During my travels, I started picking up books in every city I visited and the books started to pile up in Dubai. My top list includes in no particular order

1)Jonathan Livingstone Seagull: Richard Bach

2)Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Robert Pirsig

3)The Fountainhead: Ayn Rand

4)Illusions: Richard Bach

5)The Little Prince: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

6)My Name is Red: Orhan Pamuk

7)Chasing the Monsoon : Alexander Frater. He actually wrote an entire book on where the rains first start in India and then he follows the path of the monsoons across the country. Imagine dedicating an entire book to that? Sheer genius!.

8)Maximum City: Suketu Mehta

9)Almost all the books written by Terry Pratchett (the depth of his satire is incomparable)

10)Almost all the books written by Ashwin Sanghi, Ashok Banker's Ramayan series, Amish and Bill Bryson (thought their styles are totally different they are sound in detail and rich in language).

11)The Great Indian Novel: Shashi Tharoor (I love Mr Fandango as a writer)

12)The Alchemist: Paulo Coelho actually signed my copy at Virgin bookstore after I stand in a queue for three hours in Mercator Mall, Dubai.

13)The Complete Adventures of Feluda: Satyajit Ray

14)Invisible Acts of Power: Carolyn Myss

15)Endless Feasts: Essays from Gourmet magazine

16)The entire Harry Potter series : J.K. Rowling

17)Throwing the Elephant: Stanley Bing

18)The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Douglas Adams

19)Nine Lives: William Darlymple

20)The Joy of Work: Scott Adams (yes of the Dilbert fame)

21)Aphrodite: Isabel Allende (this book has some amazing art within the stories)

22)Video Nights in Kathmandu: Pico Iyer

23)Medium Raw and Kitchen Confidential: Anthony Bourdain

24)The Autobiography of a Yogi: Paramahansa Yogananda

25)Brave New World: Aldous Huxley

The list can go on and on. Maybe, I will add to this blog in future. One day, I hope to write one such book and edit at least three explosive manuscripts of crazy authors around the globe. Hidden gems. And today, the beauty of digital publishing is that it will take your book even faster around the world - thanks to self-publishing on Amazon.

If there is a writer within you and your story is waiting to be told, remember the old adage. “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”