The Book Dragon

My mother always bought me books I wanted to read. Mostly those were comic books and fairy tales when I was younger.

One time we were in a toy store and I was arguing with my mum and lowkey throwing a tantrum over a doll and a Karen nearby snapped at my mum saying if she kept indulging me, I’d never learn. I was getting really worked up but then my mum said, I never had a mother buy me things so I like to buy my kids what they like if I can. I have never thrown a tantrum over things I like for her to buy for me again. The comment was not even thrown at me but the memory is clear and unblemished even today.

Books were a different story altogether. My parents both have a holy respect for all books. Which was why before I had my own money, if I wanted a book, it is more accurate to say I demanded it of them rather than asked. I even had my dad stand in line with me in Lajpat Nagar for Harry Potter 4 when it came out. They didn’t care what we read as long as we read. Which was, again, how I was reading Mills & Boons romances aged eleven. That was not too bad because the stories were formulaic and I lost interest in a few years. What stuck was Dr Faustus that I read aged 10 or 11 and even today I feel like Mephistopheles is a real demonic name and I am very afraid of word contracts and how that can be bonding with the paranormal creatures. That book taught me not to sell my soul to the devil. Very creepy business. I facepalmed when I watched Jabez Stone do exactly that in Shortcut to Happiness, and even as I laughed at Brendan Fraser’s Elliot Richardson do the same in Bedazzled, I was thinking: ya, no, that’s dumb.

I digress. Books.

There have been few times when my mother was lowkey concerned over the material I was consuming. The first was J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series but when we discussed that, I said: I read about witches all the time, this isn’t any different. So she let it slide. The second was Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. That was understandable. People were protesting the book. Some had even burnt it. I remember a girl in my Christian school boarding emphatically declare: Dan Brown is going to hell. Back home, when my mother brought it up, I told her about the amazing historical nuggets that were in the book divorced of the fiction. She let it slide again. The third was Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. I said, this Satan is the Muslim one, not ours. She let it slide a third time.

We’ve not discussed banned books again post Satanic Verses. I don’t really know why. Maybe because by then, I was hardly home. And when I was home, I was not reading as many books as I used to. I’d discovered MTV, basically. Also, on the book front, we’d come to an understanding. I do an annual re-read of the Bible. As long as I do this, I think she has made her peace with my other consumption. As well, some of my books are in my kindle. And she doesn’t know their titles.

I don’t enjoy sharing my books with people because when it comes to books, I really am like a dragon hoarding her treasures. Not for nothing do I make thebookdragon my social media alias. There are books in my library (fondly named The Bookarium) in Leitan that I’ve haggled over, some I’ve fought strangers for, some I’ve broken my back hauling them all over Delhi for, and some I’ve straight out stolen. I jealously guard them. I don’t intend to share. There is even an author I refuse to share. I discovered this author quite by chance in a little forgotten nook in Defence Colony when U Rinpuii had asked Atu and I to return a book (it might have been a DVD) she had borrowed. Atu and I delight over it but this book series is between her, me and the books. Sometimes people ruin things when they find things out.

They really do.