Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Miss those books...but aah... I found good ones again !

It all probably began when my parents used to buy me all sorts of books during my primary school days. Those days, Navakarnataka publications used to set up exhibitions in Bhadravati (and many small towns in Karnataka) where they would sell Russian fairy tales, novels, comics, etc at rock-bottom prices. I also used to get Chandamama, Baalamangala(Kannada mag;Dinga was my favourite in this), Gokulam, Wisdom(this one was really good!), Champak at home! Those were the days indeed...

After that, in High School, I started and completely finished the series of Enid Blytons, Hardy Boys, etc stuff. Also, read the complete Sherlock Holmes, Ruskin Bond and R.K.Narayan back-to-back many times. Then it was the era of pulp novels :-) ... The Sidney Sheldons, Irwing Wallaces held me in fascination for a short while(Beware: I will hitlist anyone calling Frederick Forsyth or Jeffrey Archer as pulp writers).

It was only after all this(or maybe during PUC) that I started to discover the REAL books. The ones that can really influence you... The autobiographies of Lee Iacocca, Akio Morita, etc, the Feynman books, those awesome gems of Kannada literature like the Mankuthimmana Kagga, Jeevanadharma Yoga, Baaligondu Nambike, etc. I also read a lot of very pleasant good books in Kannada like Namma Oorina Rasikaru, Mysooru Mallige, Kanooru Subbamma HeggaDathi, Triveni kaadambarigalu, Durgaastamaana, Sandhya Raaga, Mathadaana, etc. With 7 Jnanapith awardees in Kannada(more than any other Indian language, including Hindi), there is enough of past literature itself to last for a lifetime of reading.

I can still remember H.S.S(my High School Kannada Master) saying that we were missing out on some of the most important things in our life by not reading those books. I can understand him now and can only be thank my lucky stars that though I was a little late, I woke up in time to enjoy them.

2 comments:

Holalkere rangarao laxmivenkatesh said...

bengaluru huduga :
it is nice to see you, speak the language you belong to -ultimately. i find you are really searching your roots. i am happy, such soul searching, should take place some time or the other; earlier the better.you can write these beautiful expressions in kannada as well ! please read "Tales from Indian Epics by: Dr. Holalkere R. Chandrasekhar, who is the author of this marvelous book,is presently serving, at UMC, USA !he is famous there at columbia, missouri, as 'uncle chandra'( 'chandra uncle') cheer up ! all the best.
venkatesh.

Logik said...

absolutely right.. dinga was real fun... chandamama as such was preachy but was a good read..

and by any chance can u put up a pic of dinga on ur page