I was a voracious reader even as a kid. Ironically, there are a lot more books these days but kids dont read so much now. There were a lot of books I read as a kid and some of them had lasting influence. Among books I would like to mention’ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ by Mark Twain, ’ My Name is Aram’ by William Saroyan’Around the World in Eighty Days’, ’ Don Quixote’, works of Dickens, R.L. Stevenson, R.K. Narayan, ’King Solomon’s Mines’’Pinocchio’’Alice in Wonderland’ .actually there are so many.
But I also loved the works of some authors which were also most enjoyable. Enid Blyton’s stories and Herge’s’Tintin’ comics, ’Aestrix’ comics, ’Disney’ comics come in this category. Comics take us in a different world. I loved to read comics of Phantom, Mandrake, Rip Kirby, Garth, Buz Sawyer, ’Amar Chitra Kathas’( about Indian history and mythology), ’Chacha Choudhary’, ’Chotu Lambu’, ’Biloo’( Indian comics) etc too. I would like to mention’Readers Digest’ in particular which I enjoyed a lot; it introduced me to many good writers like James Herriot, P.G. Wodehouse, Gabrielle Roy, David Taylor and others. This magazine is excellent in its articles, stories, jokes, everything. I also loved Hindi writer Premchand’s stories like’Idgah’ and Kids books available at that time like’Champak’, ’Chandamama’, ’Parag’, ’Nandan’, ’Tinkle’ etc. I also read and enjoyed biographies, ’Nancy Drew’ novels, books by Alfred Hitchcock, fairy tales such as by Hans Christian Anderson, ’Rajan Iqbal’ novels by S.C. Bedi, stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata, the Indian epics, folktales of India, Russia etc. I hope I have not forgotten or done injustice to any important book or author I enjoyed as a child. If I had to rate I would perhaps put my favourites in this order: 1)’ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ 2)’Tintin’ comics and a lot of other comics 3)’ My Name is Aram’ by William Saroyan 4) Enid Blyton’s stories 5)’Champak’, ’Chandamama’, ’Parag’, ’Nandan’, ’Tinkle’ etc. Mind you, there are stages of childhood and our likings change and today I am writing of these in retrospect but maybe as a kid I would have mentioned different favourites at different times. I still wonder if I have mentioned all my favourites or even in the five best list I have mentioned those I liked most at’that’ time or in the right order. See, its not a kid’s job( certainly not entirely of a grown up either!)
I have not mentioned Harry Potter books because I have just glanced at them and I doubt if I would like them but I may have liked them as a kid.
Each of these books exhilarated me, made me laugh and cry, feel a thousand shades of emotions, made me ponder. They enlarged my vision and imagination and shaped me. A good story, a good book can get into the insides of a person and keep nourishing him/her, in whatever measure, for a lifetime. This has been true of one and all and shall always remain so, I believe.