It was the kind of time and place where saying "I'm a voracious reader" didn't make you popular among the ladies. But, I used to say it nevertheless; at least, it made my English teachers happy, and that meant more chances for me to point out to the rest of the class, nose high up, that the P in pterodactyl was silent. No one gave two archaeopteryx hoots.
It was in such a time and place where the Library period in school was one of the least popular, right alongside the compulsory Music/Dance/Art and Moral Science periods. Yours truly wasn't a huge fan either, but only because we only had less than forty minutes to ravage through the wealth of the library's bookshelves. Now, I might give the impression that I was this nerdy read-it-all type kid who'd assimilated all the masters' literature. That'd be more than slightly taking you off-track. I hated the Classics section. Call it bad timing, but trying to read The Tempest when I was six-and-a-half years old wasn't the most memorable experience (still no excuse for missing the Brave New World question in Gokhale's quiz the other day), neither was Little Women or Jane Eyre. The Hardy Boys got too predictable too soon, Nancy Drew was pretty gay even for third grade, school libraries don't nearly stack as much of Ruskin Bond and R.K. Narayan as they should, and the Tinkles, Amar Chitra Kathas and Champaks would barely last twenty minutes before you were done.
This meant an alternate job had to taken up often during library periods: make everyone else read. This meant critically analysing every kid's tastes, trying hopelessly to find that perfect romance for the girl whose roll number was right next to mine, keeping the class topper away from further academic reading, and generally taking a rap from the librarian for roaming around the library harrying everyone into reading, often too enthusiastically to her irritation.
So very often, I'd be shown through mime the Maintain Silence poster, but my low attention span would quickly take me to the one right alongside it. The first time I saw a Keep Calm and Carry On poster, I was immediately reminded of that old library, with its high, pasty, dull-yellow walls, the almost-ancient wall-clock, the Maintain Silence scream and the World Book Day poster alongside it. Celebrated across the world today as World Book and Copyright Day, it urged us into reading more. But to most heady seven and eight-year-olds of 1997, the day it was celebrated was more interesting, and ironically, it reminded them of one of the most critical reasons that took them away from reading. The 23rd of April was one day before one Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar's birthday.
Bad choice, United Nations. For India, at least. Happy 39th, Sachin. Thank you for everything, and it's only thanks to you, though, that at least I remember the other day I was talking about. Not too bad a choice, then, eh?
It was in such a time and place where the Library period in school was one of the least popular, right alongside the compulsory Music/Dance/Art and Moral Science periods. Yours truly wasn't a huge fan either, but only because we only had less than forty minutes to ravage through the wealth of the library's bookshelves. Now, I might give the impression that I was this nerdy read-it-all type kid who'd assimilated all the masters' literature. That'd be more than slightly taking you off-track. I hated the Classics section. Call it bad timing, but trying to read The Tempest when I was six-and-a-half years old wasn't the most memorable experience (still no excuse for missing the Brave New World question in Gokhale's quiz the other day), neither was Little Women or Jane Eyre. The Hardy Boys got too predictable too soon, Nancy Drew was pretty gay even for third grade, school libraries don't nearly stack as much of Ruskin Bond and R.K. Narayan as they should, and the Tinkles, Amar Chitra Kathas and Champaks would barely last twenty minutes before you were done.
This meant an alternate job had to taken up often during library periods: make everyone else read. This meant critically analysing every kid's tastes, trying hopelessly to find that perfect romance for the girl whose roll number was right next to mine, keeping the class topper away from further academic reading, and generally taking a rap from the librarian for roaming around the library harrying everyone into reading, often too enthusiastically to her irritation.
So very often, I'd be shown through mime the Maintain Silence poster, but my low attention span would quickly take me to the one right alongside it. The first time I saw a Keep Calm and Carry On poster, I was immediately reminded of that old library, with its high, pasty, dull-yellow walls, the almost-ancient wall-clock, the Maintain Silence scream and the World Book Day poster alongside it. Celebrated across the world today as World Book and Copyright Day, it urged us into reading more. But to most heady seven and eight-year-olds of 1997, the day it was celebrated was more interesting, and ironically, it reminded them of one of the most critical reasons that took them away from reading. The 23rd of April was one day before one Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar's birthday.
Bad choice, United Nations. For India, at least. Happy 39th, Sachin. Thank you for everything, and it's only thanks to you, though, that at least I remember the other day I was talking about. Not too bad a choice, then, eh?
