The joys of reading

Only the eyes changed expression. He gave the impression of being a thinker and a fighter, a man who could work with infinite patience to jockey an adversary into just the right position, and then finish him with one terrific punch.

…………

“Nobody ever called on me to organize a corporation, and I’ve never yet probated an estate. I haven’t drawn up over a dozen contracts in my life, and I wouldn’t know how to go about foreclosing a mortgage. People that come to me don’t come to because they like the looks of my eyes, or the way my office is furnished, or because they’ve known me at a club. They come to me because they need me. They come to me because they want to hire me for what I can do.”

She (the client) looked up at him then. “Just what is it that you do, Mr. Mason?” she asked.

He snapped out two words at her. “I fight!”

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That was Perry Mason (the defense lawyer) in the "Case of the Velvet Claws" by Erle Stanley Gardner. I looked up to give myself a break. I had been sitting in the library. There were two 11 year old boys sitting in the front seat fighting and fooling around. I was surprised. When did the boys get in there? When I had sat at the bench with the Perry Mason, there had been a quiet girl sitting with a book in my front seat. She had not looked very interested in the book. She sat there turning the pages of her book and seemed to be whiling her time away.

The loud cry from the boys in the front seat, broke my reverie again. It took me a while to bring myself to my world around. I looked at my watch. One and half hours had passed by since I had sat in the library. I realized I had been lost in my book.

As I was growing up, books have been a constant companion. I remember, we were allowed to take one book from the school library every week. I would take one book, finish reading it in two days. There were times, I would get home at two pm and by seven pm I would finish a 400 page Nancy Drew. Once I finished reading my book, I would go to school eagerly the next day, to exchange my book with a friend's. By the next library period, I would have read atleast three books.

Other than reading books in the afternoons, we would read novels in the nights. Nights were meant to be study time. And parents were always checking on us to see if we were studying. So, we would take a full scape book, hide the small novel within the full scape book and read it as if we were reading our school assignment. It worked most of the times with dad, but mom always caught us.

Barely able to conceal her mischievous smile, she would say in a stern voice “Veena, remove the novel from with in the book.”

Well!

I have enjoyed the time I spent reading so much, that whenever I think about my childhood and books, it always manages to bring a smile on my face.