It was a dull boring afternoon in standard three. One of our weekly handwriting lessons, where we had to open up a new set of lines in our Macmillan Style Handwriting books, and re write those lines as many times as the number of lines present. A dull tedious job I must say.
Considering the fact that my handwriting pretty much sucked, no matter how hard I tried to copy the one in the book; I hated writing class. Like bleaugh. (I must say my handwriting has improved an awful lot and I'm surprised this has happened.)
Anywho, coming back to the day, it was a sleepy afternoon. I mean, the air was so thick with the feeling of drowsiness that you could cut it with a flying pencil. (These were abundant in our class then, till we realised that messes up the graphite inside and those pencils can ultimately never be sharpened. But then again, this is a different side story.)
I yawned now and then, fiddled with my shiny pencil case (don't blame me, that was the fashion statement then), absolutely refusing to get to that day's writing.
I managed to read the lines of the day through tiny miniscule sleep affected eyes.
'Veena walked along the road. There were a lot of street shops around, selling all sorts of jewellery and trinkets. Veena loved all of them.' Go Veena! Unfortunately, I didn't care enough for her to write these lines (counts the lines to write) around ten times.
Honestly, for me? It was time to go home. What a waste of a class. I looked at my class teacher Mrs. Apte. She had made someone stand in the dustbin as a punishment once. I guffawed thinking about it. Surely that wouldn't happen to me. I mean, I was the female who ran around with the homework book to all the teachers and they wrote homework in it! Big responsibility then. (That's when I had understood politics for the first time in my life. I was hated by all four classes because of my lame job/ responsibility. If there was an assassination squad in school then, I might not have lived to see this day. Like it was MY fault man! I didn't choose this way of life! Anyway, ANOTHER side story.) Basically, I was annoyed, bored, sleepy, and I wanted to go home.
I looked around at Tista. She wasn't writing either. (her handwriting sucked harder than mine. Hah!) she had made a large dot at the corner of her book, and was continuously and concentratedly making it larger and muttering under her breath. Okay. So no expected entertainment from her either.
Suddenly Somnath came in. (Somnath Sir was the odd job man on the campus. He never really had anything to do with us mind you, but we all loved him all the same. Maybe coz he didn't really give us any bhaav, and that was a different feeling for us.) Everyone looked at him and he went a little red around his moustache and his ears. We were all just happy to see something different in our class I suppose. Something that MOVES to start with.
Somnath said 'Maidum, Woh books Aa gaye hai.'
A few of us looked interested, a few just cocked up ears, while others made 'what a bore' faces and went back to dozing or writing. I looked at Somnath fiercely. Look at me Mr. Somnath! And Tell me what you're talking about!
Mrs. Apte looked as though she knew exactly what he was talking about though. She said, 'Haan, mere class ke leke aao.'
Somnath whistled loudly and the green eyed old mama-maali came in carrying a stack of brown paper covered packages.
I couldn't help but smile then. I knew I did, coz at this point Tista looked questioningly at me.
'Brown Paper packages tied up with string...' I sung to her.
'These are a few of my favourite things!' she grinned back.
And Mrs. Apte started calling out random girls' names and giving them those packages. I didn't really know what that was about. So I decided to inspect my pencil box instead.
Yeaaah, it was tearing for sure-
'Soumya Iyer!'
Wait. What?
I get a brown paper package too?!
I jumped up and jogged to her table and collected my package. And walked slowly and calculatedly back.
Lubna: what is it?
Me: It says 'Greetings. From Scholastic'.
Ohhhhh! I'd forgotten I'd ordered books from Scholastic! A ripple of excitement shot through me.
I carefully opened the package and peeped inside. Three books. One large. One medium. One small. I removed all three from the package a spread them over my table.
Aaaaahh. The beauty of unread, new, glossy books.
I don't remember which the big and biggest were now, but the small one was surely my first 'The Secrets of Droon'. There was something more in the bag. Space Stickers! Ooo.
As I sat admiring the stickers, Tista walked over and inspected the books.
Tista: which one you gonna read first?
Me: the secrets of Droon! :D
Tista: *picks up big book* I'm taking this one then! :D give it back tomorrow!
Me: Okay! :D
I carefully packed the stickers and the two books back in the brown paper and sat hugging the package and smiling till the end of the class.
That was one of the first instances I remember when the appearance of books had made me very happy and changed my mood for good. Since then, there have been countless of the same experiences. Excitement, joy, extreme knowledge, are just some of the emotions that pass through me when I pick up an unread book even today. I have felt immense pleasure and satisfaction on receiving books as gifts, and finishing them off on the same day as when I have received them. Mainly out of curiousity and super enthusiasm.
I really like books. And you? :D
