Hobby: Reading : Part 2:

 

In those days (Seventies) , buying new books used to be quite an expensive hobby. With God’s Grace, I never had a shortage of books to read, courtesy the many sources that were ‘made available’ (so to speak) ... even today, the charm of a real book far exceeds that of a PDF/scanned copy / online kindle read.

One method of adding to the collection, would be to select my ‘most wanted’ books as my birthday presents ‘in advance’.
At the Noddy age( 6-8/9 years) , I would select the Noddy books which I did not have, at Allies’ book stores, and inform each Uncle one of the serial numbers from 1 to 24 accordingly. (We couldn’t afford to buy them all-they cost a princely Rs 4 to Rs 8!).

I would look suitably thrilled when the books were given to me, duly signed and marked ’With best wishes from so-and-so Kaka (Uncle in Gujarat terms) / Bhaiya(cousin) ’.

In the coming years after the Noddy age passed, I would select Famous Five/ Five Findouters/Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew/ Three Investigators books.(Will share a bit more on what made each of these series so memorable, in coming posts)

The same ‘suitably thrilled ‘ reaction as in the case of Noddy’, would be on my face when receiving these books. Heh heh.

I couldn’t contain my excitement, and would wait eagerly for the birthday party to be over, so I could begin reading… reading once , twice, thrice, and repeatedly, until the book would be ‘by heart’, to use a school days term.

Similarly, most of the ‘pocket money’, or, the cash gifts of 1/5/11/21/51 Rs which I would get (an Indian tradition when one goes to someone’s place during a festival like Diwali) , would go towards increasing my books collection.

What a thrilling childhood, for a bookworm like me.. thank you, thank you , God / Universe for the continuous supply which continues till today.

(And, in this way, my books and comics collection continued growing. Haha)..coming up next.. other ‘methods’ of collecting books n comics.