As age goes by, reading starts to change dimensions. As a young reader, fiction was fascinating. I remember reading rajesh kumar, ramani chandran, patukottai prabar in my 8th to 12th Std. Books were of interesting stories, detective/mystery and all about what happens next. I think now that, getting used to such books at young age, mind automatically looks for only story line in the book.
After getting in to college, library and friends introduced English novels. This was the age of mills and boons, popular novels of Sidney Sheldon, Erich Segal, Jeffery Archer. I think i read Ponniyin Selvan that time around. It was definitely stand out from other works i read. Unsure, why i didn’t pursue with Tamil novels. Anyways, here as well, it was all about stories and more of love/loss.
Getting out of college and technically standing on my own, non-fiction was a need to face the world and to face my inner self. There must be some 100+ books that i would have read from 2004 to 2018. These were helping me to look at life mostly my own, through different jounery’s. Some of people inspired me during these reads were Gandhi, Haruki Murakami, Che, Mohammed Yunnus, J.Krishnamurty, Chris Hadfield, Bharathi Baskar, Sadhguru …. While none of them created long lasting impact, each of them created a new portion of me that still exists. These were years of non-fiction, i think already my life was filled with challenges of my age/generation, i didn’t bother too much about what i was reading about and where would i want to go in the reading. Its just one book lead to another, no other planned reading.
In 2018, reading JK triggered lot of alternate thoughts and KFI changed perspective of Education. And to some extent the life. That and a personal situation took a turn to focus on things that is really needed for the self in me. Same time, found Jeyamohan’s writings, majorly his essays. That created a lot of influence and gave perspective to what was inside me. The refreshed-self now looks more in to History, Philosophy and there seems to be a direction in the reading. While the materialist in me asks ‘What for’, the other side counters with ‘anything else interests you now?’. At this point, answer is no and the journey continues!.
நான்.. இன்று.. என் பார்வையில்... 