IF YOU HAD TO CHOOSE BETWEEN READING AND WRITING...

 

A choice between reading and writing? Would that be a choice at all? No, siree, it would be more of a Hobson’s choice, a kind of a “my way or the highway”!

The most popular example of Hobson’s choice is “I’ll give you a choice; take it or leave it.”

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 When I was just a little girl, (no, I am not singing ‘Que Sera Sera’ here!), I was surrounded by books of all sizes and shapes. My parents, my grandparents, every person I knew, and his neighbour, were voracious readers. You could not enter my home without being waylaid by a book. Of course, the tastes varied – my grandfather read the Bible, the Gita and literature in all its glory, my grandma was more into cookery books and pampered us by creating delicious pin wheel sandwiches. Dad and Mom were more into fiction, but they did share a love of the classics. So, from an early age, I was happy listening to interesting content from books from all the adults in the family.

When I started reading on my own, it was as if all the delights of the world had been thrown on my lap, and I could not wait to savour them all. The world of Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie and classics like Black Beauty, Heidi and Oliver Twist to the more complicated but the equally intriguing Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Daphne Du Maurier, PG Wodehouse - my life seemed comfortably crowded with adventure, suspense and humour. Later, as I graduated to the senior classics, and encountered characters like Miss Havisham, Elizabeth Bennet, Jo March, Rip Van Winkle and my favourite of all, Edmond Dantes, all of whom played havoc with my imagination, my mind moved on to the exciting horizon of writing.

                                                                 Figment.com

I was ten when I wrote my first poem titled ‘The Blue Marble’. I wrote, not exactly because I wanted to attain literary acclaim, but because I wanted to impress my mother who seemed too impressed by far with the writings of a friend of mine. The girl would land up with her poems and, much to my chagrin, sit through the evening, drink tea, have dinner and then leave, very proud of herself. A fact which burnt a hole in my heart, a hole that was repaired only when I began to write!

So, I read, and I wrote, and the two were so intertwined that not a day went by when I did not do both. They were to me like my two eyes; I could not imagine being without one of them. They were the companions of my growing years, and today as I look back on the way I have lived my life so far, there have hardly been days when I have not read a book or written a few lines.

 After my tenth Boards, when I decided to take up Literature, there was a general hue-and-cry from my teachers who had predicted that I would take up Science, slog through my years in school and college and end up being a doctor, none of which had any place in my plans.

I wanted to be a writer. And continue to read! Period.

 Hence, if I had to choose between reading and writing, I wouldn’t, thank you very much.

 

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