I am a third generation traveler in my family and atleast the second generation to have fallen in love with words. My grandmother and grandfather used to take their eight kids along with their kitchen across India and my father did the same with me, albeit without the kitchen. I was brought up on a healthy dose of road travel during the 80s and 90s and a fair bit of impromptu travel as well where we often did not know where we were headed until we reached the destination. I don’t know of any other way to live other than to read and to travel. My finest memories of life have been of when I have been on the road or lost in the pages of a book. One of the first places I remember quite vividly was Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh where we drove in our old light blue Premier Padmini with my grand parents in tow. I still remember the thrill of being able to see my breath, curls of white vapour, swirling out of my mouth. That was my first hill station, in living memory.
I don’t quite remember when I first started reading though, but one of my firsts certainly was the abridged version of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. I was barely 10 then. I don’t remember much of the book now except the scene when David bit his step father and was sent to a boarding school The Salem House.
Over the years my love for a lot of things have appeared and disappeared, however these two have given me company through and through. I have read over a thousand books since then and visited hundreds of places, some of which I remember while some slowly fading in the many turns of my memory. This blog is an attempt to capture the memories of the books that I read and the places that I visit, for everyone else to savor.