A trail to a revival of ‘Reading books a perishing love’ especially in small towns

        
        When I was in school, I hated reading. Whenever I sat down to read, I would immediately fall asleep. That’s how everyone might have felt when they were children. But back then no one told us to read books that make you feel something at least not sleep. Like motivated, inspired or helping gain actual knowledge. When I first started to read it, it was to pass the time and be distracted from the chaos in my head. But I didn’t know that books can make you feel so much. I remember how I first got into reading. It was a quarantine period and I got this idea of the stock market. I was so intimidated by the stock market that I wanted to know more about it and how investing works. Then I saw this interview of Saurabh Mukerji, he is chief investment officer at Marcellus Investment Managers Pvt Ltd when I saw that interview he explained some of the concepts that made sense in a way and recommended his book The Coffee Can Investment which he had recently published. Again, I was not a fanatic of books and not a reader. Somehow, maybe because of boredom or something I started reading that book. Day after day it became interesting and kept reading and finished reading that book maybe within a couple of months. I don’t even remember how many pages the book consisted of.  It felt good. Not just the feeling but also the knowledge that I got was fruitful. Although I am not a stock market wizard or anything after reading but still, I could say I understand the markets pretty well. And the best part that stuck with me was how reading can be fun and more informative than most of our school or college textbooks. Yes, the book was not some novel or anything but still, I liked the way it felt. It felt like I had achieved something great. Gradually, the craving began. Started reading more self-help books like “Ikigai by Francesc Miralles and Hector Garcia”, “The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel” and “The Atomic Habits by James Clear”. After that, I didn’t know what to read so the chain broke. After a couple of months, I wanted to read and this time I wanted to read something different so I searched on the web for “books to read” and it showed a list and my eye caught ‘The Book Thief by Markus Zusak’. I didn’t know the summary or the plot but liked the title though. So, started reading it. It was a pretty lengthy book if you search how many pages that book had. In the beginning, I thought I would never finish this book and would eventually drop the whole idea of reading books so I set a rule of reading at least one page every day so that I create this habit for myself. This idea was from the book Atomic Habits. The journey began from one page to half a chapter or one chapter or sometimes till one conclusion. The book started getting interesting day after day. Sometimes it almost felt like I was actually in that moment experiencing things. The book was so well carried throughout the chapters it never felt boring even for a guy like me who is reading novels for the first time and that too a lengthy one. Literally in some parts, it makes your eyes moist. At least it made my eyes moist in some parts. And when I finished reading that book maybe it took me three and a half months to finish if I remember but in the end, it felt so good. It was like cleansing my inner self. And yes, that’s how I fell in love with reading books. And ever since then, I was a rookie bookworm. Before that I used to read online like downloading PDFs which is illegal so do not try that because your system could be hacked. So, after that, I started purchasing books and was always in search of some fascinating books. Currently, I am stuck with the history genre. So yeah, this was my journey from a completely hopeless non-reader to a rookie bookworm.

Hold on! Why am I telling my story? What does this have to do with whoever reading this? I understand you do not like to read books. You are Gen Z who like to listen to book podcasts or read online with Amazon or whatever but the thing is reading the tangible book, turning pages in curiosity of what’s going to happen next, falling in love with the fictional ideas and sometimes characters are something that makes you feel something that digital means cannot make you feel ever. The smaller cities to that matter like Hassan, Karnataka the love for reading is nowhere to be found. There may be several bookstores that actually sell novels, history, poetry and such books that are narrated not to educate but to give that feeling of experiencing that narrative. You can put it as like cinemas.  Although books don’t have many actual visuals the imagination is limitless. The people who read books may get this nonsense of mine to non-readers and say this guy makes sense. However, they are on the verge of closing their business or transforming books and bringing more educational books to stores. The whole idea of telling my story was to tell that anyone can become a bookworm and the main agenda of this article is to bring as many people as possible to the reading books community. especially in smaller cities like ours - HASSAN, KARNATAKA. Now, you say what community and where. I want to build a community of readers in my locality that is “HASSAN, KARNATAKA”. I want to bring back the culture of reading especially in the youths like us. It gives us different perspectives of different minds. Several clubs in Bangalore encourage individuals to join their community on some days in an outdoor environment and just read. Not just that these kinds of communities are hotspots to build good friendships with strangers. Sharing ideas, group discussions, and sometimes being able to make connections. I want to build a community that not just runs on social media but connects people for real. And it goes further ahead in my head if it grows well and strong. So, the first thing first building a community. I do not know or care about which part of Karnataka you live in, which genre book you read and which language book you read I just want people over the age of 18 years who like to read or want to start reading. The most important agenda of this community will be to bring more people to create the habit of reading and less surfing. So, whoever is reading this please do share it with as many people as you can and if interested drop your Instagram ID in the comments and I will contact you through my Instagram handle. We can connect and build a book-some community for ourselves. And if you don’t know what is this book community thing please check out the link to the Instagram handle which runs in Bangalore.