Sumita and how bedtime stories charted her path to success

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

Dr. Seuss

Stories are the best thing that can happen to a child.  As a child grows up, so does his inherent yearning for stories. I often look back at the time when I lay beside my mother, my beloved sweet mother, waiting eagerly to listen to the stories she would so patiently and affectionately narrate. It had almost become a precursor to our afternoon naps. Everybody had just about enough time to do so – I am speaking of the days when the rat race to outdo one’s peers did not exist, or perhaps it wasn’t as insane or intense as it is today, not to mention the then non-existent serial killers of time – smartphones. In short, time used to be far more fruitful and a lot less mechanical. Coming back to the point, it was customary for almost everyone to take a post-lunch siesta. After a fulfilling meal, our mom would beckon all of us to catch some sleep. As we lay comfortably on the soft mattress, we listened intently to the stories that she read out from children’s magazines and storybooks. Only an unfailing sleep would break our rapt listening spell, which had as much to do with our mom’s self-taught art of storytelling as with the story itself.

That is how an interest in stories was aroused in my impressionable mind, and I must admit that time has only served to fan the flames of this interest. As I grew up, Sundays became synonymous with visits to the local bookstore, where the unmistakable fragrance of new prints wafted around the store. All of us were allowed to buy a book to see the week off. In other words, we could read up to three books a week if didn’t mind sharing. Tintin, Asterix, Amar Chitra Katha, Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, Spiderman, The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, not to mention the unforgettable works of Enid Blyton. The credit also goes to our school library, which seemed to have an unending arsenal of timeless novels and stories.

Reading is pretty much like an addiction – it’s quite hard to give up on it once you have started doing it. People that are fond of reading always come up trumps in life. It doesn’t necessarily have to be something material; it’s more concerned with the abundant knowledge that the reader acquires and cannot lose, regardless of his financial standing. Personally, I see books as an escape from our increasingly mundane lifestyles, without undertaking any actual risks – all this, of course, at a minimal cost.

Autobiographies have come in particularly handy in working on my personality and planning my way to prosperity in life. I owe a large part of my present success to my good reading habits, which were inculcated in me by my far-sighted parents. As a teacher, author and poetess, I would recommend reading to everyone in a heartbeat.