The journey of my engagement with fiction compels me to acknowledge some of the influences and other factors in that journey. On this account this post takes a little personal turn. Reading is an addictive habit.
“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Jane Austen,
Happily I was infected with this very early in life, reading the small detective novels that came my way.But the number of books at home was very limited. My father’s books on psychology and his Erle Stanley Gardner collection were not very appealing for me. When I ran out of books, the mobile exhibitions by Visalandhra book house were like a wave of fresh air to use a cliché. When these exhibitions took too long to come to my town, I would go to Vijayawada or Madras in search of books that would suit my budget.
Those were days when landing at Vijayawada used to give me a feeling of inspiration and intoxication. The avowed leftist leanings of this city’s population, its renowned leaders, its famed book shops and squares, the Karl Marx road would elevate my spirit and I would get a feeling that I was in socialist Russia or Cuba. Perhaps it had to do with my state of mind then. I was just out of my graduation and had developed a passion for reading. I would visit Visalandhra book stores and mobile exhibitions to get to know books and authors. As they promoted Russian writers the most, I first got in touch with Progress publishers and Raduga Publishers. I was captivated by the cheap editions which were however printed on excellent paper and bound beautifully. That made me wonder about the virtues of socialism. I was so impressed with these works that I wanted to write to Progress publishers, Moscow. I couldn’t because I didn’t know how to post my letter. Sadly after the dismantling of the Soviet Union, post the Gorbachev era, the publications stopped. I remember having first read Mother by Maxim Gorky and Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons in excellent Telugu translations published by Progress publishers. Short of Books, I would go to Vijayawada by train from Nellore to visit the bigger Visalandhra showroom. There I would shop, fondling the books, reeling under the intoxication of newly printed books and all the Socialist ‘thinkers’ Lenin, Marx, Engels, Trotsky and Stalin staring at me from rows and stacks. But I never ventured to go into their tomes. I was always captivated by fiction and discovered suddenly the earth shattering works of Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov, Idiot) Tolstoy (Anna Karenina, Resurrection, Cossacks tales) Gogol, (Dead souls) Sholokhov (And Quiet flows the Don) Boris Pasternak (Dr Zhivago) Mikhail Lermontov (A Hero of our times). My simple, provincial view of life changed forever and the deep contemplation and agony of the Russian writers rubbed on to me, flying through the pages and the characters.
If not for the Visalandhra editions, I would never have read some memorable books like గడ్డిపరకతో విప్లవం – ముసునోబా పుకులోక, Ekkori’s tale and Etoah Mundah won the battle by Maha Sweta Devi, అయిలీత by Alexei Tolstoy and జమీల్య by Aitmatov. For a long time, I kept referring to the poetics of Dostoyevsky by Nadezhda Kashina to comprehend certain points about Dostoyevsky’s works. Going to a bookstore has been a preoccupation, to be exhilarated about discovering a rare title or a gem.
(To be continued)