Blessed are the hands that gift you books

My earliest memory of being presented with books is in St John the Baptist School at Alwaye, where students were given certificates and a children’s book as prizes for academic proficiency. It came neatly stamped and sealed under the hand of the Headmistress, giving a vague sense of importance and gravitas to toddlers. 

Four decades later, when my daughter was gifted with a book from her college, neatly printed with a certificate slip, I was pleasantly surprised how the custom had survived in some pockets of the world still. It came with a pinch on my conscience that I did not start this practice when I was heading a college, though I had introduced prizes for attendance and academic merit. 

My grandmother’s sister’s husband, who was an academician, used to gift my brother and me books whenever he made house visits. Professor K C Peter, whom we fondly called Kochappan, whose laugh could be heard four houses away and with a booming voice and diction perfected in classroom lectures, gifted us abridged versions of Pinocchio’s tales and Gulliver’s Travels. As a true teacher, the next time he came home after many months, he took a special interest in recording our reading progress, in between a slice of marble cake and tea. If I make an effort to climb up the attic, I am sure I may find these books, some parts turned into fine powder by termites and cut worked by silver fish. 

Summer vacation meant a month away from my parents and in the loving care of my grandparents at their Kottayam house, which culminated in a press of cash into tiny palms as “pocket money” when we left amidst tears, kisses and lingering hugs. Once grief was overcome, my father drove us in his white Ambassador, feet dangling in air, to Paico book store in MG Road, Ernakulam. I was raised on Amar Chitra Katha and avalose unda, I famously joke. The Amar Chitra Katha comics were bound eventually, and the next generation of readers in the house have also devoured them. Precious pocket money was to be utilized for sacred rituals of book buying. Serious pursuits than flippant indulgences. Starve, but read always. 

I do not recall getting books or cash while in college, but I did make money from winnings in debates and speech competitions. I have trophies and plaques to show, but unfortunately no books. College years meant access to the capacious innards of Ernakulam Public Library, and one saved the prize money and occasionally indulged friends and self to Falooda in Caravan Ice Cream Parlour. But one entered Caravan only after passing a branch of Paico, located at the mouth of Broadway. By sheer force of habit, one went up the red oxide steps to look at the books. Only look there and note down (to be borrowed from the library later).

In my late thirties, another ferishta, started sending me books as birthday gifts every year, saving me from a long spell of non-reading. In my head, I was wandering in the desert of life and he shepherded me back to the living waters of books. He has been gifting me books for more than a decade now and I owe two rows of my book shelf to dear friend and batchmate, NH, reluctant policeman but a committed reader. It also meant that every year, my daughter would look forward to the Amazon delivery, to see which book was coming her Mummy’s way. She knows the ritual now, of me flipping to the last page and making a small note of By NH, year, place. Last year, we joked that we are at a stage where we should consider gifting book shelves than books. Transfers in a government job and changing size and shape of government pool accommodation have meant books gasping for air in cartons and trunks even after many months of moving in. 

When I was posted at NIFT, Bengaluru, I had a reading club called Director’s Den, where I read a book with students every month. Some of my best memories of those years are from introducing books like Elif Shafak’s Forty Rules of Love and Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things to students. Seated on a vibrant jamakkalam, I would read them excerpts and navigate them through language and craft. 

Many of my friends who know me, gift me books now. Books that they have liked or books they know, I will like. I frequently gift books to the children I know. Friend’s children and those in the family, and somewhere I am paying back the Kochappans and the schools and people who thrust books into my hands and along with it, handed me the key to understanding humanity and the Universe at large. Children have a wider choice basket now, and we now tell them lazily to buy whatever they want than going to a book store and picking out books for them. The more enterprising among us go a step forward to say invest in mutual funds, reminding them to save up for future and try to instil lessons in financial discipline. We count currency and gift them in gold embossed envelopes, or worse, make an online transfer, standing two feet away from them, divesting them of the romance of getting a book in the hands, opening and inhaling from the fresh pages, getting smothered in their warm embrace, enamoured by adult handwriting with curlicues and flourishes. 

To the many hands that have gifted us books, may they be blessed with light and love, and when it is our own time to gift to a younger person, may we not forget that books are a good bet, better than a pair of Sambas if you ask me. They may look snappy on feet, but a book will take them one step closer to being human.