“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
~ Emerson
Had a dream about me being in Chennai and being asked about a book that I was reading. I don’t quite remember who it was, but it was someone happy to see me with a book. That set me thinking.
It is great to be in this phase of life where I’m getting time to read and also, write a bit. I hope it lasts. Usually, when things are running smoothly, something happens that throws everything upside down and before long, years would have passed by. Anyway, it feels good to sit back and reminisce.
Chennai Days
I was in Chennai for less than two years in my life, but from a reading standpoint, it was a tremendous period. Was lucky to be in the same team with 4 people I now refer to as “the philosopher quartet” - JC, MS, AH, and VS. They were well-read and used to discuss books often. VS was a real poet who penned poems in Tamil. Was introduced to Immanuel Kant, Nietzsche, J Krishnamoorthi, Bertrand Russel, and many authors during this period just by listening to them chat with each other. I believe that it was a stroke of luck that I was even placed in that team as my first job. Specific books that I recall right now are Robert Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea recommended by MS, Arthur C Clark & Isaac Asimov novels by AH and Who moved my Cheese and a few other business books by JC. AH gave me Arthur C. Clark’s Rama II as a gift when I left Chennai.
Other groups of friends were folks outside my team - few people who were in my class during the 3 month orientation where we were given a crash course of CS topics, my roommates, and friends of these people. I developed great admiration for people from TKM and CUSAT (engg colleges in Kerala) due to the interaction with these folks. PS was in my class and was a big Harry Potter fan. She had forwarded a pdf/text of the first book, and I had liked the book a lot. AN was my junior and was from Bangalore. As Bangaloreans were ‘foreigners’ in Chennai, I used to connect with b’lore folks just to chat. He was a big fan of The Lord of The Rings. When we used to meet in the hallways of Elnet/Tidel, he would talk at length about the story and it was pretty entertaining. I’d credit PS and AN for my interest in fantasy novels.
Another great influence on my reading during that time was DT. She was PS’s friend and also was in my roommate RV’s team, I think. She was a great fan of English classics. I think I read most of Thomas Hardy’s novels during this period: Hardy - The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree. Also remember reading George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss & Silas Marner. I think I read Adam Bede after I came to the US. Her favorite books were Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and Three Men in a boat by Jerome K Jerome. She introduced me to Somerset Maugham and AJ Cronin. Maugham’s Of Human Bondage and Cronin’s The Keys of the Kingdom were great reads. I read Keys of the Kingdom at a time when I was contemplating becoming a priest. My goal was to work for a few years, get some personal things taken care of, and get into seminary. I did research a few places but wasn’t sure how to get into. Also was waiting for a ‘sign’ that never came! Erich Segal’s Doctors was another of DTs recommendations. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Leon Uris were my roommate RV’s recommendations. VV was another close friend of mine and he was a big fan of Thoreau. He used to speak at length about Walden.
Well, at the outset, it seems like I read only the books from people’s recommendations. That is true for the first books of many authors. But usually ended up reading more from the same authors and also did pay it forward by recommending the same with new folks that I met along the way.
Now that I think of it, I probably could go back to my earliest memories to see what I read when. Most of the books that I’ve read have some person or incident attached to it. It is the question of remembering.
Primary School
One of the first novels I remember reading is The Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I got this book as a prize for getting the first rank in 5th std. I remember reading the whole book but not understanding it much. I probably read a few times without understanding, I think. I actually understood the story only after I read an abridged version. Another book that I remember reading during that time is Oliver Twist. My mother probably had to study some of Dickens’ stories in school. She had a high regard for Dickens and her advise was that I stick to reading only biographies or stories by Dickens, and so wasn’t quite happy that I was reading a lot of fiction in high school.
I do remember reading a lot of Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha during this time. Probably got them from Krishna or Joe or other friends in the neighborhood. Read Balarama and Balamangalam, mostly with BS. My uncle had a lot of books in Kerala, and when we visited during summer holidays, I used to spend a lot of time reading. Remember reading Ithihyamala (Garland of legends/myths), Greek Purana Kathasagaram (Greek Ancient Stories), and 1001 Arabian Nights. Got really interested in mythology - Indian as well as Greek during this time. Almost all of my mythology reading, in the initial days, were in Malayalam. Can’t believe that I read the stories of Zeus, Ulysses, Achilles, etc. first time in Malayalam.
Another group of my readings during primary & high school days were novels from Malayala Manorama weekly. Used to read it stealthily most of the time, though. Josy Vagamattom, Joisy, Ettumanoor Sivakumar, Kottayam Pushpanath were my favorite authors. At least the ones that I remember now after 20 odd years. It used to be serialized, in which only a part of the story would be published every week and most of them always ended on a cliff-hanger at the end. One was left waiting for next Wednesday to come! Josy Vagamattom wrote thrillers which had many fights - I remember Dravidan and a hero named Noble. Not sure if Noble was the hero in Dravidan or it was someone else. Joisy wrote poignant family dramas - I remember Ila pozhiyum shishiram in which a man comes back home from Gulf war after 5 years in captivity and finds that his wife had married his best friend. Ettumanoor Sivakumar was a writer of horror stories that had manthravadam (magic), yakshi (lady vampire), powerful munis and what not! Kottayam Pushpanath wrote detective stories that had a lot of twist and turns.
High School
High school was a different world than what I was exposed to till that point. Most kids were reading Hardy Boys, Secret Seven, Asterix, and a few other books and comics that I’d never heard of. In terms of reading volume, I probably read the maximum during that time. Definitely more than 250 books. Just the Hardy Boys books were probably over 50, may be 100. Read most books of Agatha Christie, Jeffrey Archer, Sidney Sheldon, Robert Ludlum, Harold Robbins, Alistair MacLean, Jack Higgins, Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason) and so on. I think I was mostly reading Hardy boys in the 8th std. and suddenly jumped to reading [[Wilbur Smith]], Harold Robbins, Jack Higgins, etc. in the 9th. Sometimes I read a book a day and rushed through them so fast that I barely remembered anything other than the main plot points. We were also going through a tough time personally and the books were probably a good escape too. All the reading meant that I didn’t study as much as I did during primary school. From someone who used to be upset with anything less than 100/100 in primary school and used to check with my teachers when I got less marks, even half a percent less, I became ok with just getting 90% in high school. But it was also a good transition from memorizing every single word in a text book to understanding high level ideas from books. Jeffrey Archer’s Kane and Abel, Sydney Sheldon’s Rage of Angels, Alistair MacLean’s Guns of Navarone, Robert Ludlum’s Bourne series, were some of the best page turners that I’ve read, then and now. RR was a looming influence and like a guru to me throughout high school. A lot of the books that I read were books that he had read though he was far ahead in terms of vocabulary and comprehending difficult texts. Robert Ludlum and Jeffrey Archer were probably his favorites and mine too. The idea of starting with one of an author and reading through all of his/her books came during this time, I think.
Engineering
When I think of Engineering days, one book that stands out is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I can’t recollect how I got the book. It was most probably from Viveknagar library. The curious thing is that the cover and the first couple of pages were not there. The torn book started with ‘Part 1 - Non-Contradiction’ and I thought the name of the book was ‘Non-Contradiction’! As I was studying during the day and taking tuitions for neighborhood kids in the evening and doing homework in the night. So there was not much time to read, but somehow did manage to read.
I did read many English Classics during the time. Became a member of British Library with RA’s help and we used to visit the library many times. Re-read a few Agatha Christie books, a few Shakespeare books (not the plays but abridged versions which were written as stories). Discovered Antony Trollope while randomly surfing through books. I read a few of his books, but don’t remember any at the moment. I’d read A Tale of Two Cities in the past but read that again and found it to be the best book I’d ever read.
Also used to visit the Central library in Cubbon Park during those days. It was very close to UVCE and was the biggest library I had seen in my life. It probably is the largest library in the State even now. I was awestruck with the size every time I visited it. We had a very good library in the College but this was something else. Remember reading books on Kerala history from the library. Didn’t know that Malayalam was a young language and evolved as a result of combination of Tamil and Sanskrit. Also read more about our Church history, Christianity in Kerala, etc. Got a better understanding of Orthodoxy and the beginning of Christianity in Kerala in 52 AD when St. Thomas came. I think the average Orthodox Christian in Kerala knows history quite well due to our faction fight with the Syrian Patriarch. The ‘freedom’ fight has resulted in more awareness, otherwise, numbers could have gone down in every generation, with more of the diaspora moving on to new philosophies or identities.
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking was a book that SN had read and I read it based on his recommendation. We used to have a lot of chat around space time and our place in the world itself. He was a follower of Ramanujacharya’s Dwaita philosophy. There are definitely many more books that I don’t recollect right now.
Working Days - India
When CTS recruited us from Campus during 5th semester, there was a hope that the Bangalore office would become big enough. But 9-11 struck and we had to go to Chennai. Couple of years of work in Chennai and then a year or so in Bangalore were great in terms of reading. I already mentioned about Chennai days above. When I rewrite this piece, I’d probably write it in a chronological order. In B’lore, I read a few business and leadership books recommended by AN who was from IIM-A and was super wise. I was lucky that he was sitting next to me since he was not even in our team. AN and GG used to solve the crossword puzzle on the Hindu every day morning. I remember not being able to solve even one in the initial days and then slowly getting a hang of it and really loving it.
Working Days - US
A lot of my time in the US has been this cloud of time where I did nothing other than work. Get up in the morning and immediately check if there were some issues or emails from APAC, work late in the night to deliver projects that had very tough deadlines, etc. In reality, it wasn’t like that every day but it seems like that. I’ve always been nostalgic about my time in India and it has always felt like there was no time.
But when I look back at the last decade, I have read many books. Most of my Software Engineering related reading happened in the last 15 years. Reminds me to create a section for Software / Computer Science related books in My Reading List.
I remember reading a lot of poetry in the first couple of years. Was still in touch with friends from Chennai and Bangalore and we used to exchange poems even during Chennai days. Was even writing poems during that time. Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Browning were my favorite poets I think. Shakespeare’s sonnets were a great read. So were other poets like William Blake, Rudyard Kipling, HW Longfellow, John Donne, Tennyson, Rumi.
Longfellow’s The Arrow and The Song, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day), Sonnet 116 (Let me not to the marriage of true minds), John Donne’s No Man is an Island, Robert Frost’s Stopping by the woods, The Road not taken, and Mending Wall (Good fences make good neighbors), Kipling’s If, Elizabeth Browning’s How do I Love Thee, W.E Henley’s Invictus, William Blake’s The Poison Tree, Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud, Konstantinos Kavafis’s Ithaca are poems that I’d recommend to anyone.
In 2007, AK, my wife, and I wrote a book of poems and called it Sycamore Tree. It might have had around 20-25 poems. Not published though. AK has gone ahead and written over 100 poems by now.
AK is a more prolific reader than I am, and I’ve read many books after she has read them. Susan Cain’s Quiet comes to mind. She loves classics too. She has probably read Jane Eyre five-six times. I read Marquez - Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Dear Life by Alice Munro, and a few other books from her list.
One of my neighbors suggested reading Jonathan Stroud and I loved the three books in Stroud - The Bartimaeus Trilogy - The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem’s Eye and Ptolemy’s Gate. Read Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase while on a trip to Denver a few years back. It was a great experience. Took me back to the early days of reading Hardy Boys!
A colleague had recommended **Neal Stephenson’s Stephenson - Snow Crash. Was astounded by that. Stephenson had pretty much predicted a lot of things way back in the 90s. Need to read more of Stephenson.
Last two years were good in terms of being exposed to reading and books. MT runs an ‘Authors Series’ in the campus where Authors of books come and talk about their books. Just attending them and getting a gist of the books were great time spent. I have all those books in my bookshelf waiting to be read.
Note - I will probably come back update this since more memories may come back in the future.