Swastik and his growing interest in reading over the years

There are some questions in this world that are simple and yet difficult to answer. For me, that question is how I fell in love with books. Perhaps this blessing was passed on to me by my parents, or probably my teachers, when I was not more than three. I started my early studies at a rather young age, and my innate ability to pick up things didn’t go unnoticed even by my school principal. However, that was not all.

After finishing my primary school studies, I wanted to know everything there is to know. There was a problem, though. I didn’t know how or where to start. The natural outcome of this cluelessness was that everyone around me became answering machines to my endless and insatiable curiosities.

Being the son of a reputed lawyer, I had always dreamed of emulating my father to become a man of knowledge like him. In the eighth standard, I decided to give Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes a try. Though I bought two volumes of the same, I wasn’t able to concentrate on it for more than fifteen minutes at a time. Given that I was unable to understand and appreciate its value at that time, I went for some books on topics such as science, which was the one theme that interested me the most.

In my tenth standard, I was the topper of my class. I think I was among the few who studied the least and scored the most, which was because I tried to understand everything beyond my school’s syllabus. That made school studies a whole lot easier.

In the same year I was awarded a book on the works of Jules Verne by my school principal, for having secured a good rank. Though I took it out so as to admire it once a month, I didn’t want to read it for about a year because it seemed too plain to me. Being the age that I was, I cannot be blamed for feeling kind of bored of a book devoid of any colors or illustrations. However, once in the twelfth standard, I decided to give it a try. Reading two chapters a day, I started to perceive art in a new way.

Now I try to read as many books as I can in order to become a man of literature, for I finally understand that reading can change a person’s life forever.