Started reading beyond school (in Jodhpur (Raj.)) while I was in class IV (1961),from a library in Public Park, both in Hindi and English. Moved from Phantom and Mandrake comics to biographies of Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad, Vikramaditya, Maharana Pratap…, abridged versions of Shakespeare - Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, Tempest… Ramayana, Mahabharata…
My mother used to subscribe to Hind Pocket Books, 8 to 10 books used to come by post every month, it was like rain on parched land. As I moved to class VIII… read Col. Ranjeet (34 of them…), Sharad Chandra Chattopadhyay ( Devdas… made effort to learn Bangla to read him in original), Bankim Chandra, Acharya Chatursen, Shivani, Amrita Pritam, Gulshan Nanda, Krishan Chander, Gurudatt Ji was a close friend to my father, read him extensively Ganga Ki Dhara (5 vol.), Khandar Bol Rahein Hein ( 4 vol.)… and many many more…
As I moved to class X (1969) and further… read James Hadley Chase (76 of them, every one that I could lay my hands on), Ian Flaming –James Bond (18 of them from Goldfinger to The Man with a Golden Gun…), Nick Carter, Alistair MacLean (28 of them Guns of Naverone, Where Eagles Dare to … Circus), Harold Robbins (79 Park Avenue, Stiletto to… The Pirates…) By the time I was in class XI and entered college the scene shifted to classics Jane Austin, Bronte sisters, Earnest Hemingway, Erich Segal…
At 18 while pursuing my Law Degree, heard Swami Chinmayanand Ji (12th Chapter of Bhagwat Gita, Prashno Upanishad and Narad Bhakti Sutra) and that opened the gates of freedom for Self, read Bhagwat Gita (Tilak, Vinobha, Gandhi, Radhakrishnan, Satyamitranand Ji…), all 9 major and 18 minor Upanishads, Vivekananda, Sri Arobindo, Emerson, Bertrand Russell (History of Western Philosophy, Theory of Social Reconstruction…), Biography of Philosophers…
Entered profession around 21 and half (1976)… moved on to Pluto, Karl Marx, Laski, Hitler, Machiavelli, Nehru, Gandhi, Ayn Rand, Linda Goodman, Gopi Krishna, Krishnamurthy, Frederick Forsyth, Arthur Hailey, Sydney Sheldon, Maitrai Devi, Mario Puzo, Toffler, Alexander Hamilton, Justice Holmes, Lord Denning, Palkhivala, Biographies… (n… numbers), Yogananda, Irving Stone, Irwin Wallace, Robert Ludlum, John Grisham, Dan Brown, Dawkins, Freidman, Kennedy, Bill Gates, Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Robin Sharma, Deepak Chopra … and many more who are not on Shelfari like C.K. Mathew’s (who introduced me to Shelfari) 'The Mustard Flower' and 'The Best is Yet to Come' and Sushil Gupta's 'The Fourth Monkey'…
Books have helped me to learn from the life of man of action Alexander to Napoleon to Gandhi... the greatest minds that have helped me, seeing life, law, relationships... more objectively and clearly … Krishna, Emerson, Einstein, Hamilton, Holmes, Sri Aurobindo, Vivekanand, Ayn Rand, Toffler…
Reading helps knowing, analyzing, understanding, experiencing and realising how people think, feel and act… It enables living in their skin in late nights, early mornings, in toilets, in libraries, while eating, drinking, traveling… and helps us in realisation of the Self… We all together constitute the whole… We are the whole…
The world of unreality ceased to be,
There was no more a universe built by mind…
It was the Bliss of formlessness and form,
It was all Love and the one Beloved’s arm,
It was sight and thought in one all-seeing Mind,
It was the joy of being on the peaks of God…
The spirit saw the world as living God;
It saw the One and knew that all was He…
'Savitri' by Sri Aurobindo
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