Reading Privileges

The house that I always refer to as my grandmother’s house was actually built by her grandfather in the early 1900s. I don’t know very much about him, but his son who inherited the house lived there all through his adult life and it was where he brought up his children, and where my grandmother spent most of her life.

She was the apple of her father’s eye, his first born, and she could do no wrong. Although he was an advocate of women’s education and encouraged her to study further, she herself decided to get married at the tender age of 18 – because her cousin whom she was very close to was doing just that. Even if she didn’t complete a formal college education, my grandmother had a wealth of knowledge she absorbed through her reading. A rather progressive man, her father had bought the women of the house a subscription to the popular magazine, Women’s Weekly (I think it was) that came all the way from England. These magazines were read carefully and then stored like treasures in a little room (this house was full of these little rooms).

The collections in that room grew to beyond magazines when my grandmother returned there to live as an adult, separated from her husband, her children grown and independent. She had a small income to run the house and look after herself, and she spent what she saved on books and chocolate.

I grew up under my grandmother’s wing, and I was allowed access to this room one day when I was around 11 or so. Rather precocious and with an unquenchable thirst for books (all fiction), I read voraciously through my summer holidays. When she couldn’t keep taking me to the shop and buying me books, she finally decided to introduce me to her own collection.

I trotted behind her as she strode purposefully to the library room. I had never really been inside. I had only caught glimpses previously when my older cousin would sneak in to return or borrow a Mills & Boon romance. I was never allowed in then, so being taken and shown the room was quite a climactic moment. And my heart was beating in fair anticipation of what lay behind the doors.

My grandmother produced a key and snapped open a small lock that held the latch in place. The doors swung open, she clicked on a switch, and there before my eyes were about five wooden cupboards filled with books! I absolutely could not believe that these had been there all this time. One cupboard had a latch and a little padlock. (I suspected later that those were the ones that had the Mills and Boons!) Others, while they had no padlock, were always kept shut, “to keep out the silver fish and dust,” my grandmother informed me. And as she opened one after the other, my acquaintance with Georgette Heyer, P G Wodehouse, Agatha Christie and several others began. Along with Campco chocolate.

Chocolate and books were a strongly forged association in those days. My grandmother would buy BOXES of this Campco chocolate, both milk and white, and ration them out to us kids. When the afternoons were too hot to be out with the dogs or cycling, we would turn on the fan in the bedroom where we could lounge around, stretch out on the bed, open bars of delicious chocolate and open carefully bookmarked pages, and begin. Those books could never sport a dog’s ear, or we would be scolded roundly for that. No, she always gave me a bookmark and informed me in no uncertain terms that if I did not take care of the books I borrowed, my library privileges would be revoked.

Later, when that house was sold, one of the big questions that arose was, “what to do with all these books?” Well, she took all of them. She had a carpenter build several shelves all around the little flat that she moved to, and from the living room to the bedroom all you had were books. She would read them repeatedly, and I am reminded of that now when I notice my kids doing the same. When she bought a book, she would sign her name across the front title page and write the date as well. She always liked to remember when she bought it. I remember the booksellers at Gangarams, Higginbotham’s and Nagashree (at the Jayanagar Complex) all welcomed her with pleasure when she came in. She knew all their books and with some asperity and annoyance would demand to know when the next book was being released by this or that author.

Today, I don’t know what has become of most of her books. I can’t say I have any. I try to be practical and not store things like books. Besides, Campco chocolates don’t exist anymore, and I now have a subscription to Audible. There are days, however, when a certain wistfulness creeps in and I want to just reach out, pick up a book just to see her long signature scrawled across the front page and the date noted meticulously beneath.