Proclivity for reading by an apologetic reader

I'm not a voracious reader like some of my friends on Facebook. I used to be one but it was long ago. I lost that habit over time, maybe after I finished college in the mid-70s. It was when I started traveling long distances homebound. After getting into a daylong or overnight train, I used to immerse myself in one book or other, and I would finish it by the end of the journey. On the way out, I would stop by the Higginbothams’ store on the platform in the rail station and buy myself a new paperback. If my next trip was after, say, two months, it was my sloth to take that much time to finish a new book. I wondered what changed my reading frequency.  The answer struck me one day. Those days when I boarded a train or bus, my baggage used to be spartan. Even it'd be very close to my feet or tucked under the seat or put on the overhead rack, but always within my reach. I needed not to think about my other concerns or preoccupations beyond those belongings, or my literal baggage the whole time my travels lasted. Sometimes it was merely a toothbrush, all my mind carried until my destination. (Thank God there were neither mobiles nor the Internet). My world would be shrunk to the confines of a moving carriage. So, I would become too short-sighted and focus only on the book before my eyes, and would soon start reading it with abandon. It was like being a sanyasi/ascetic/mendicant who was having just a loincloth. Maybe a true sanyasi had one more piece of that humble costume left to dry on the clothesline (ironically plural). 

In my childhood and adolescence, I read a lot of books in my mother tongue besides English. Only a few of them were books of all time and they still haunt me although about half a century later. 

Later I took a break from reading fiction and prepared for the IAS exam (only one written test those days) and chose my graduation subject of political science besides European and British History for study. I failed at it whereas three of my contemporaries in the college cracked it and they are ruling the roost now even after active service while wallowing in the limelight. I envy them, of course. Or I would not be writing this at my leisure. In that google-less era, the University library in Tirupati, a popular library on the main street in Kakinada, and city central library in Afzal Gunj used to be my watering holes to quench my thirst for any kind of reading forgetting my scouring the pavements near old Andhra bank HO building in sultan bazaar, Hyderabad for secondhand and rare books. Those days the makeshift pavement bookstalls were the hallmark of Hyderabad, or are they still?

The contents of those IAS study subjects vaporized into thin air from my head after I joined the head office of the bank next to the pavement bookstalls I mentioned above. Now like vengeance returned or the mummy returns, the banking-related subjects of study increased in number for certification in the banking career. The books comprised even accountancy and commercial geography to name a few that I never thought of in my normal educational career until my MA after B.Sc in the distant past. 

After nearly 25 years into the service of my bank, I quit the job under a voluntary retirement scheme. I was simultaneously doing an evening course in law and was in my third and final year when I quit the bank. I thought the law course would help me in furthering my career from then on. Like never before I studied with interest the innumerable law subjects and to my disappointment none of which came in handy during my stint as an apprentice lawyer for a year in the High Court under a seasoned, gentlemanly, and well-read government lawyer who is now placed deservedly in the uppermost echelons of judiciary in the country. I later pursued my post-graduation in law but lost my heart somewhere and stopped myself midway thinking that reading should have an end or limit. 

It was when I got an offer as a faculty in political science/banking at a popular university and I grabbed it for a living. I thought as I was an MA already, I needn't read anything more while on the job, unlike my banking career. But as fate would have it I was made in charge of publishing distance learning textbooks and other course material meant for UG&PG subjects including MBA courses with the help of faculties from the departments concerned. Our Units’ target was to publish one book per day on average. I clung to the post for about 6 long years and one of my duties as the designated coordinator was to read every word in the draft books to be printed for monitoring their accuracy concerning grammar, and relevance besides the general layout of printed textbooks that included my nightmarish subjects like statistics, and psychology although I loved all other subjects on arts, and computers and finance subjects. Of course, the last two were my bête noirs. But you can give me politics and English any day. 

For 10 years until a few years ago, I was a pro bono editor at home on my computer system for a website portal belonging to an online acclaimed literary journal meant for worldwide member’s exchange of muse and miscellaneous literary thoughts that I used to read, tweak and publish online round the clock. My job was to separate the wheat from the chaff before posting their contents online in real-time. 

Now, after I quit every place where reading was the sine qua non for a living, I began writing my humble thoughts every day for a pastime. When writers are legion these days, I began dating with books once again thanks to the gentle pressure applied by one of my confidants, and well, I have to see to what consummation or culmination this will lead to.