My mama was wondering if my liking for the written word has anything to do with my genes. We do not have even a minor man or woman of letters in our family, while there were quite a few biblophiles including this very uncle of mine. My father and his brothers were basically good mechanics. My grandfather put two of his sons to study law, my father and his eldest brother. My father did not practice law even for a day and took to Radio mechanism after being mesmerised by the lone Radio receiver in Madras that was put up in the sands of the Marina beach by the Municipal corporation of Madras. His other two brothers started a motor workshop after studying up to intermediate. My father got books from 'The Hollywood Institute of Radio Engineering”, Los Angeles and learnt it all by himself. Even the lone lawyer amongst the brothers must have practiced economy more than he did law as he joined the family business of tinkering and turning after a few years.
They had all the state of the art lathes, milling, grinding machines . My father took to radio repairing as his vocation but he was no less a mechanic than his brothers. He would see a handle for his hammer even in a broken branch of a tree fallen by the roadside. There were coils of wire, solder and iron, valves and vises and various electrical meters , saws and sand paper about the home and my father would be at his work-table most of the time.
Though growing up in such an atmosphere that was very 'mechanical' , the farthest my skills went in that direction was of opening and closing the toothpaste.
But my father had a good collection of books. He bought books every time he travelled out of our town. He introduced me to Jerome K Jerome's 'Three Men in a Boat' and PG Wodehouse and his favourite characters Psmith and Lord Emsworth of the Blandings Castle. He used to read me out passages from 'The Way West', stories of early settlers to western states of USA. Taciturn person that he was, he would be besides himself when he would create before me the imagery of entire families travelling in caravans, crossing mountain ranges, streams and grasslands with he help of an experienced Pilot and how they parked their caravans in a circle when they had to fight the Red Indians. We had books of short stories from Somerset Maugham, Guy de Maupassant, O'Henry from which he would read out his favourite passages. There were the usual collection of old Reader's Digest and Perry Mason mysteries.
He had his text books from school that with his complete address on the first page down to India, Asia, World & Universe. I remember reading Merchant of Venice from one such book ( “Tarry a little, old Jew” said Portia) . He had passed out of Loyola college, Madras in the year 1925, the first set to pass out of the college under Father Bertram.
I would attempt reading all of them , but was too young to understand and my english inadequate . But the deed was done. I had cultivated more fascination for the turn of phrase than the turn of screw. Thereafter throughout my boyhood and adolescense I was an avid reader. I would read that all required reading, from D.H Lawrence to Pearl S Buck. From Razor's Edge to Rebecca Inn. From Mark Twain to John Updike. James Hadley Chase, Arthur Hailey and Harold Robbins were gobbled up in a voraciousness that left me wooly-headed for some days afterwards.
The youngest of my three elder sisters, the most artistically gifted among the siblings. wrote in Tamil. She would write short stories and send them to Tamil Magazines without avail, though I clearly remember them as above average stuff with a very feminine touch.
I had a fascination for poetry and I secretely tried my hand at it. All my attempts ended in the dustbin even more secretly as I could not proceed after the first line most of the time. I would open with a grand opening line , something like Psmith's 'Across the pale parabola of joy' but thereafter the mind would turn vacant and the pen in hand an obstinate mule.
As you grow older, you become more discriminating in what you read. Your faith in the written word dips. You re-read more than you read. You find out that truth can never found in anything written down as it then becomes contextual. When you write with the knowledge that the opposite could also be true, words are indeed weariness.
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