NO MATTER the general impression that the reading habit is on a decline in our society, the overall experience at different book stores does not indicate so. Book stores attract enough numbers of people even on a daily basis and general books beyond curricular ones keep moving in good numbers. The people who happen to meet one another at book stores -- traditional or modern -- discuss books bought and read, and promise exchanging their personal copies in favour of the ones their respective collections do not have. The general impression, thus, from an evening at the book store is that books are in demand and those who buy books generally are serious about reading. In other words, there is enough evidence to believe that book-reading habit is still popular with people. This, of course, is a happy feeling -- particularly for those who have spent lifetimes in reading books in countless numbers round the year. The loud-thinker has often found different people at book stores all over the city and has gained from conversation woven around books. Every time he has any such conversation, he feels reinvigorated and resolves to read more books -- of course, bought (and only rarely borrowed or lent). Reading has often made a huge difference to everybody. Not only is it an engaging activity but also has a meditative, elevational quality that enriches personality like little else can offer. On one level, reading enhances knowledge, all right.

 

But equally important is the recreational dimension of reading -- in the sense it occupies one’s time in the most creative, engrossing manner, as suggested by different research projects across the world. The purpose here is not to talk about the good dimensions of reading as an activity; the purpose is to insist that the numbers of people who love reading books has not declined as much as some people love to believe. Enough practical evidence is available to suggest that good numbers of people still read books and benefit from the activity in different ways. No matter the rising graph of electronic reading, the reading of physical, printed books also is quite popular today. There certainly are some people who like to indulge in an anti-book drive by stating the so-called advantage or otherwise of electronic reading. May they have their own sweet choices to make. But such people cannot obliterate the fact that book reading, too, is quite in vogue even today not just in the Indian society but also everywhere in the world. The loud-thinker fondly remembers the conversation a girl of 15 years had with her parents when the family was visiting his home some time ago.

 

Upon seeing multitudes of books neatly stacked on a side table in the sitting room, the girl gushed, “This room’s aesthetics are so beautiful with those books in that corner!” The loud-thinker felt so proud of his books -- but also of the fact that that girl’s sense of aesthetics had books as an inseparable dimension. But he would often assert that books are never a part of any demonstration. Those are there because that is their place and the home is one wonderful space with the presence of countless books. That the young girl in the description happens to be the loud-thinker’s grand-daughter, is another story, all right. But the little anecdote did indicate the nature of the girl’s thought-process. That books occupy an important place and space in her mind, is something very wonderful, to say the least. Having enjoyed book-reading all his life, the loud-thinker has come to a final conclusion that the human society will never lose its sense of importance for books, no matter the alternative media available from the domain of technology. To some, this thought may appear to be rather oldish, so to say. No matter that impression, the loud-thinker’s love for the books and the magnetic attraction he feels for those wonderful pages between covers will always remain with him.