Do you remember the first time you learned to do something that you love? I mostly do: my first bike was a BSA Champ, it had white handlebars and it was either pink or red, I can’t remember, but that’s when I realised girls’ bikes had a lower bar in front than boys’ did. (I think it’s because when they were invented, women wore skirts, and so couldn’t straddle so high, but now in Berlin where adults ride cycles everywhere, most are the “female” version, whatever the sex—or wardrobe—of the driver. For my part, I only have a hard time getting on if my pants have a drop crotch, or are too wide-legged, but these are the perils of fashion.)
Maybe I also remember learning how to read. I was very young, an early reader, maybe about two and a half or three. Family lore has me down as a person who was quick to speak, slow to walk, which is a mythology I’ve always liked about myself. It suits me now, as a lazy verbal adult to have been so since I was barely formed. I like the idea that some things are part of your personality, not made. On the other hand, I was fairly adorable, a small plump body, lots of curly hair, large eyes, and the first grandchild on one side of my family and the only girl after three boys on the other. I was carried often, made a fuss of, and so maybe in my baby brain, I realised I didn’t need to walk when pointing and asking for something could have the same results.
Because I learned languages early, it was almost obvious that the adults in my life read to me frequently, every time I needed to be entertained. Despite my youthful appearance (humour me), I was born in very very late 1981, practically 1982, but still a time before all the various children’s entertainments jumped in. And so, reading. To make me eat food—a habit I continue to this day, to put me to bed—ditto.
So, back to the same family lore: one day, bored of waiting for my mother to come back and finish a story, I actually started to read by myself, and in reading, understood, and in understanding, learned how to see a story.
But at the same time, I was already in school, having petitioned to join six months earlier than my age group, and they were using the Montessori method so I was sounding out letters there. But again my memory feels false, because what school teaches you your letters at two and a half? No, I must have been four at least, or five. And reading must have been very very close thanks to the work I was doing at school, so that day, that book (The Enormous Turnip) was just the day it all happened.
And in remembering, I thought of a teacher who said, sternly, “Stop reading at home because you have to learn at school,” and felt indignant, only to realise this wasn’t my memory at all, but a scene from To Kill A Mockingbird.
But reading is my life, I would rather read than do anything else in the whole world (especially write), so it bothers me that I can’t remember my life without it. Maybe that’s why I’ve made up this whole story:
SCENE: A crowded dining table in a small government flat in Delhi. A small CHILD (age 3 or possibly younger) holds up a BOOK impatiently. She waits to see if she can hear anyone coming in that will be able to finish her story, but hearing no one, picks up the book herself and turns the pages impatiently.
CHILD: “On-ce… once. There. Was. An. EN. or. MOUS.”
CHILD: “Once there was an enormous turnip! I’m reading! Do you hear me? Mother! Father! I’m reading!”
Music breaks out as the CHILD sits on the floor surrounded by fatter and fatter volumes. Spotlight on the child as she sings to the tune of Baby Got Back
CHILD: I like big books and I cannot lie,
All you other readers can’t deny,
When a book comes in with an itty bitty font,
And a hardback binding set to daunt,
You get READ!
ANYWAY. Here is a poem I recently found that sort of sums it up
Learning to Read
By four I knew what my mother must have known
immediately. I was more trouble
than I was worth. She’d lie down for a nap and there I’d be
buzzing around her, thinking
that I had a right to push my nose into everything.
That’s how I learned: bumping into things
like a fly who keeps asking the same question
of glass. At seven I hovered over words
on cereal boxes, candy wrappers,
my grandmother’s romance novels. My brother’s
adventure books. They all tasted
like delicacies, like the crust
of fat off the roast, dollop
of butter, heel of bread, smear of gooseberry jam,
sweet, brown rot
of a banana, still-soft gum with a little peppermint
hidden in it. I was that hungry.
Leftovers, scraps, carrion. As I turned the pages,
I picked my nose, studied scabs,
the blue grit I pried from under my nails,
the bit of wax on my fingertip,
reading the smudged ink
of my body, its own dark alphabet.
I didn’t care what I feasted on
as long as I feasted.
by Christopher Bursk
from The First Inhabitants of Arcadia University of Arkansas Press, 2006
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In moving from Delhi, I had to leave behind my book collection, built over years. I had wall-to-wall shelves in my small study, arranged by genre, everything I thought of within easy grasp. I miss those books, I miss that study.
Here in Berlin, I have three shelves: two basic structures of wood, meant for someone’s garage or garden, one tall red one, second hand from IKEA. These shelves are mostly empty, and I come from the school of thought that a full bookshelf is the best decoration. Yet, in filling them, I feel anxiety about the future. When we leave this apartment, which, after all, is only a rental, when we leave this city—will we stay here for the rest of our lives? What will happen to my things, and while most don’t mean very much to me, my books do.
But then I think of living a shortened life, by which I don’t mean the number of years I’ll be alive, may it be long and full and so on, but denying myself pleasures on the basis of not being able to take them with me. More and more, I depend on my Kindle, I can store as many books as I like on it and it stays the same size, but then there are books I like to read on paper.
There are books I can’t bring back with me from Delhi. Lufthansa gives us all a measly 23 kilos—which I paid for last time—and into this must fit clothes and spices and medicine and steel plates and shoes. I took over part of K’s luggage, sending him home with three out of the five Cazalet books by Elizabeth Jane Howard. “I can’t do without them,” I told him. I tried to sneak in Middlemarch, but it was too bulky for either of our bags, so it had to stay behind. Ditto with the Collected Jane Austen, they would all have to wait for me till I returned.
But unlike Elizabeth Jane Howard—hard to find in Delhi, so I had to patiently build up my collection—Jane Austen and George Eliot are easy to find. A few weeks ago, struck again with the urge, the yen to read Emma, I looked on this website I remembered using last year called WOB. Second hand books in good condition and with free shipping. I might have gone a little mad, I ordered not only the Jane Austen (handsomely bound in blue and gold with a little ribbon bookmark) but also Middlemarch and also, in a kick to read more short stories, about four volumes from here and there. They are cheap-for-Europe, and they fit with the ideas I have of this summer, of sitting in the park with my paperback, across a picnic blanket, which is a tablecloth my mum brought me, blue and gold, like I’m a Nawab, reading in the pleasant evening sunshine, a flask of coffee near me. It seems ideal, even though summer is the time of friendships, of people calling you out all the time, not of solitude and quiet reading by yourself. Still: I’m planning it. I’ve taken up yoga again, and if I carry my book to my yoga class then I can take myself off to a quiet bench after yoga and read and listen and be outdoors.
I want to have here in my Berlin library so many books I have in Delhi. All of Laura Ingalls Wilder, my copies in Delhi were a particularly serendipitous Daryagunj market find, so many decades ago. A Suitable Boy. LM Montgomery. Mostly dead women though, that’s who I miss.
But no matter how many duplicates I manage, these shelves are too small, too empty. They’ll never be my Delhi library, full of surprises for even me, its owner. I have to tell myself it’s okay to miss things because I’m used to black and white. In my fiction, I imagine shades of grey, in real life, I depend on contrasts. If I like this life then I can’t miss that one. If I like this flat, then I can’t sigh for my lost books. Not lost, I remind myself now, only left behind.
We went for Gallery Weekend yesterday, Sunday. It’s this event across Berlin where several art galleries have special exhibitions and you can walk from one to the other in different neighbourhoods. We picked an area called Schöneberg, famous for once being the gay area of West Berlin. David Bowie lived there, I like to tell people. Anyway, the art was okay, pretty average, but the galleries! A lot of them were in beautiful apartment buildings, old and picturesque. One of the galleries had a sign saying, “This apartment is for sale” and it was just the most beautiful home I’d ever seen. None of us, all the patrons there, had an eye for the art, we just poked around the flat. Some oil tycoon or tech billionaire will probably own it soon, but not before I saw the floor to ceiling (empty) bookshelves and transported myself, in my mind’s eye, to living there, having my own collection of books looming at me in this beautiful room. I could place a mattress on the floor and just a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling and it would still be the most impressive house I’ve ever seen. It’s funny how you think your life would be different if you were just switched to a different location, a beautiful flat, a beautiful city, and then you’re there and you find yourself surprised that you’re still you, even though the scene around you has changed.
Anyway I’ve just re-read Mansfield Park (is Fanny Price just Austen trolling us because she is the worst heroine) and Persuasion (dreamy, but without the will they-won’t they tension of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility) and I will soon—after my Middlemarch re-read, jump into Emma as I promised myself, and I’m considering adding more long dead women to my shelves, specifically Elizabeth Gaskell, because what is home if you don’t have the things you love around you?
x
m
.Who are you? Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of eight books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
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Loved this!