Wednesday, January 12, 2011

My strange habit of collecting books

I was brought up in a family which runs a business of selling books. My father and grandpa are running their own book stores. When I was school going, I used to go to my father's book shop and sometimes to my grandpa's book shop during my holidays. I have spent considerable amount of time in both the shops and read many tamil books. All those books were fun stories and tamil poetry.


After a period, my frequency and time I would read these books came down drastically and stopped. It happened after I had started to do my college in a near by town which is one hour from the place where I lived. After I joined the work, is when I was able to read some books again. It was kind of a continuation… from where I left.


I have seen a lots of Osho's books being sold from my father's book store. I also have visited many other books stores where they had lots of books on his teachings. I was attracted by the popularity and the amount of importance those books were getting. I started to wonder how all of a sudden books of one person can impress so many people. The buyers of these books were majorly youths. Curiosity about Osho's book grew stronger and stronger day by day. I was also little afraid if I would loose a ticket to the destination where everyone else seemed to travel.


I tried to take couple of books on Osho's title and started to read. They were all in Tamil. There were way complex for me to understand. May be I was bad at understanding those heavy concepts (which I initially thought it was) or because it was intended to be complex as it talked about philosophy.


I was out in Chennai after my college, doing literally nothing, but was sharing a room with my college buddies in one of the mansions. We used to roam a lot in Chennai and there is when I came across Osho's book in English and started to read them. This is the first time I have ever felt an English book to be more easily understandable than a Tamil book. Alright, after this I did not go any further on reading many other books. I read couple of Osho's books in English and paused there. After going to work, I blamed it on time for not reading many books.


I always wanted to read lot of books. Though I stopped reading books, I did not stop the habit of collecting books. I became a good book collector, but did not really appreciate them. Over a period I have bought many books which I think would inspire me and take me in the direction to my destiny. I also believed I was reserving all these books to be read some day… May be, during the retirement days - as my father used to say.


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