BLOG POST-36 Between the Pages

 

                                                     Between the Pages

                                                                                       Why Books Are the Best Journey You’ll Ever Take

There’s a particular smell to old library books. Dusty, a little worn, pages soft at the corners from a hundred other hands. Some of you know that smell. Some of you are yet to discover it.

Either way — this one’s for you.

My love affair with books didn’t start dramatically. No wise dada-dadi sitting under a neem tree, pressing a book into my hands with a life lesson attached. No “light bulb” moment that I could frame and put on a wall.

It started with a school library - one library period a week in Class 4.

The system was simple — almost unfairly simple for something so magical. A book was handed to you. You read it. You gave it back in that same lesson. That was it.

No choice. No browsing. No algorithm telling you “You might also like…”

Just a book, a week, and whatever world lived inside it.

And those worlds? Oh, they were enormous.

Tom Sawyer taught me that mischief, done right, is its own kind of art. Huckleberry Finn showed me friendship that didn’t care about rules. David Copperfield whispered that suffering doesn’t have to be the end of your story.

I didn’t just read these books. I lived in them for a week at a time.

And then I got to know Mark Twain — the man behind the mischief. That was a different kind of discovery. Realising that behind every great story is a person who lived something worth telling.

A few years later, I could issue a book for a whole week.

That little library card stamped with a return date felt like a ticket. To where? Didn’t matter. Somewhere that wasn’t here. Somewhere bigger.

During summer vacations, the reading didn’t stop — it spilled over. I’d finish one book and reach out to friends. “Do you have anything?” And they always did. Books travelled between homes, between hands, carrying little pieces of everyone who had read them before.

That’s also when Nancy Drew walked into my life — confident, curious, unafraid — quietly telling me a girl with a sharp mind and a brave heart can figure anything out. And Prem Chand brought the world right back home. Real people. Real struggles. Real India. The kind of stories that don’t let you look away because somewhere in them, you recognise someone you love.

Later came Harry Potter — and with it, the lesson that the most ordinary beginning can lead to the most extraordinary life.

And then — the Book Fair.

Years later, when I was working, I went to the New Delhi Book Fair for the first time.

Nothing could have prepared me for it.

So many books. In one place. Every subject, every genre, every world you could possibly want to step into — all under one roof. I walked in and just… stopped. Took a breath. Looked around.

And then I was lost. Happily, completely lost. For four, maybe five hours.

I didn’t want to leave. It felt like a dream I’d somehow walked into with my eyes open.

When I finally did leave, I came home with books — one for each person in my family. Chosen carefully. Chosen for them. Because by then I knew — the right book for the right person is one of the most thoughtful things you can give someone.

That day, books weren’t just my journey anymore. They became my way of loving people.

And then, years later, life came full circle.

I found myself at the Delhi Book Fair again — but this time, my own book was on display.

I remembered that younger version of me who had once walked into the fair, looked around at thousands of books, and stood there with a twinkle in her eye, completely overwhelmed by the magic of it all.

This time, the twinkle was still there.

But it was different.

It was multiplied by something else — the quiet joy of seeing a book with my name on it sitting among all those books I had once looked at with such wonder.

My heart was full.

Perhaps that is what makes journeys like these so special. You don't always know where a love that begins so simply will take you.

Mine began with one library period a week in Class 4.

And somehow, all these years later, it brought me back between the pages — only this time, I had become part of them.

Some books don’t just tell you stories. They tell you about yourself.

Hugh Prather’s Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person— a book that feels less like reading and more like someone quietly sitting beside you and saying the things you needed to hear.

It’s not a loud book. It doesn’t shout. It just reflects. And in that reflection, you find pieces of yourself you didn’t even know were missing.

That’s what the right book does. It becomes a mirror. You open it looking for a story and find — oh. There I am.

Books are companions on the days you feel most alone. They are teachers who never make you feel stupid for not knowing. They are escapes that don’t require you to abandon your life — just step away from it, briefly, and come back a little more yourself.

You don’t find the right book. The right book finds you.

Someone hands it to you. You spot it at a friend’s place. You pick it up at a fair, surrounded by thousands of others, and something about this one makes you stop.

That book was waiting for you. It had been, all along.

Life gets loud. It gets heavy. It moves too fast and asks too much.

And sometimes, the most radical thing you can do is sit down, open a page, and go somewhere else for a while.

Not running away. Just… refueling.

Because somewhere between the first page and the last, you might just find a little bit of yourself you’d forgotten about.

Pick up a book. Someone in there is waiting to meet you. ✨

 

 

Which book has stayed with you long after you turned its last page—and why?