What I Missed While Walking Past the Kanchi Mutt

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A place I passed every day without really understanding it. As a kid growing up in Malleswaram, devotion wasn’t something we discussed — it was just in the air. The smell of agarbathi in the evenings. The noise of vendors lining up on 8th cross before a festival. The quiet expectation that you showed up, bowed your head, and moved on. Ganesh Chaturthi. Varalakshmi Vratam. Deepavali. Janmashtami. Ugadi. The calendar moved, but the pattern stayed. The Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham in Malleswaram was part of my daily route to school. Not something I questioned. Not something I deeply understood. Just… there. Every morning, on my way to school, I would slow down for a second in front of the Mutt. Just enough to bow my head toward Kanchi Kamakshi from outside the gate — and then hurry along before the school bell. It was a ritual for as long as I can remember. I don’t know if it came from devotion. I did it because my parents did it. The street...
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The books of 2016

I would pick up a book and start reading.  I would read and read and read, maybe for two or three months.  I wouldn't want to give up on it just yet.  Let me try for a few more days, I would think.  And then, finally, I would just end the misery.  A hundred pages into the book, maybe, and I would never set eyes on the rest.  The scarring would be so deep that I wouldn't take any more books for the rest of the year.  And then, the year end, and new year resolutions and the cycle would repeat again.  I was embarrassed and hurt.  I wasn't like this.  I would read a lot in my school days as well as in my Engineering days.  It's just that with the advent of the internet, and YouTube and host of other streaming sites, the amount of distraction had increased manifold that I couldn't invest my time in books with the same amount of focus that I had in the past.  In spite of the many bleak reading years, I would still complete one or two books in a year and those were mainly fiction.

Personally, I was fed up of giving the excuse, "I just can't read anymore.  I used to read a lot in my college days." I realized that that was the lamest excuse I gave to others when discussing reading habits.  I could as well have said, "I have lost interest in reading books.  I just read snippets online and watch movies and series, one after the other." I could also not bring myself to say, "I have no time." The "not reading" habit was also affecting me emotionally.  I wanted to read but couldn't get myself to read books.  The feeling of not completing a book hurt a lot.  Only a fellow reader can understand what I was going through.

And then, after many years of huffing and puffing, in 2016, I set myself a pretty ambitious goal of completing 12 books by the end of the year.  I started with a couple of parenting books, then biographies, a couple in fiction and lots of non-fiction.  A couple of books later, I had got myself into a rhythm.  My TV time reduced a lot.  As soon as we put our son to sleep, we would quickly finish our evening chores and I would get into a world of my own.  It was my time.  I didn't want to waste watching TV or browsing useless stuff on the internet.  It was magical (not a hyperbole).  I could understand what makes Elon Musk tick.  What exactly happened to Christopher McCandless in Alaska? How to treat infants and toddlers with love and respect? The most riveting and emotionally draining book I read was When breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi.  It was simply fantastic.  By the end of the book, I was literally in tears.  I read some really inspiring mountaineering experiences - climbers summiting Everest and K2.  I read about three or four novels. By the end of the year, I realized that I had totally grown out of fiction.  It didn't interest me as much as it did in the past.

Overall, I was happy to be back in the midst of books.  I also realize that there is a lot of time to do things that you really like.  After a point, reading was like an addiction.  I just wanted to keep going.  The target was 12.  But, by the end of the year, I had read 25.  Here goes my list of books that I read in 2016.

I hope 2017 can be as enriching as 2016 as far as reading is concerned. 

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