Of People and Places

When we were children, we had a godrej cupboard full of books - a real treasure trove filled with children's books, classics, travelogues, recipe books, books on architecture, ecology, sustainable living, history, politics, autobiographies, comics  - 'eclectic' is the word. We even had clippings of Tintin and Phantom, painstakingly cut out from newspapers by my father, classified according to date and bound into a book! Sadly, by the time we began to read through them, the termites had already chomped their way through, creating what they must have thought aesthetic shapes and patterns, much to our irritation. Browsing through all these books was a favourite past time. I enjoyed it thoroughly though I cannot say that I understood what they were all about ! The kinds of books that I liked most were those with paintings or photographs in them, of exotic places, people, animals, food, strange customs and traditions. So, I suppose that's when I really learned ...