Wednesday, August 10, 2011

THE ADDICTION


I called up Arnab
--“I’m f*^ked!”
--“What happened?”
--“I bought IT”
--“Bought what?”
--“THAT”
--“Bought WHAT?”
--“Two hundred and five dollars. DAMN!!! What was I thinking!!”
--“ho-ho-ho”
 (after audibly swallowing rest of the laugh), “really? What now?”
--“They are shipping it..DAMN!!”

That was my reaction after ordering the Kindle from amazon.  No fist-pumping, no self-congratulatory back-slapping, no chest thumping. Just plain and simple acceptance of my insatiable addiction of reading.

Let’s face it. I love reading. When I was a child, I used to read everything apart from my text books, and that means EVERYTHING, including but not limited to from wrappers for jhal-muri to the newspapers that was used on wet cement. In those days I used to stay at different small town or villages. There were never enough reading materials to satisfy me. So, I used to read everything multiple times. If I ever got my hands on a newspaper (which was not very often) it would be read from the headlines to the printed-and-published-by line again and again.


I never formally learned Bengali. When I just finished learning the simple sentence construction, somebody gifted me a story book by Upendrokishor RayChowdhuri. I started reading it and within a few days it was finished and I lost all interest in learning Bengali formally. The result is, now I don’t know the whole of Bengali alphabet by heart (it’s true, I never completed learning it)


I read up anything and everything while growing up. I just couldn’t decipher the difference between good writing and bad writing. People used to say “that book is good, but that one is not”. I used to wonder, “Really? But they both tell an amazing story, albeit in a different way”. Why one is is good and the other is bad?


My reading addiction turned for worse in my 3rd college year when I discovered the joy of ebook. Before that by ebook I used to understand the text files from Gutenberg, which while were definitely very tempting due to their rich contents, but were an absolute nightmare regarding page marking or reading pleasure. But still it provided me a pleasure-haven only mine, though taxing on eye and back.


By 4th year I have learnt to enjoy the pleasure while ignoring the back-ache and eye-strains. Those were the days when I used to read on my PC for 6-8hrs at a stretch and 12-14hrs a day. Those were days where I finished Lord of the Rings + The Hobbit in 6 days straight. I cried after finishing it. Not only because it was worth it, also because for all those days I was living almost all my waking hours with the characters. They became my part of my life.


Almost the whole of 4th year and half months after it was spent at home. I lost count how many books I read during that period. It was a time of pure pleasure!! Me and my books…those  were the days.


Anyway, I am rambling.


What happened last month is that I heard about price-drop of Kindle. Just out of curiosity, I went to check amazon and Kindle had me.

THIS was the thing I was looking for all these years. Something which behaves as a book, doesn’t strain my eyes and let me read whatever I wish to.

I had to have it.

So, the addiction goes on.

Will update on next post my buying experience on Kindle.
Till then ciao!

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Ganges at dusk



Smog filled Kolkata sky


While we were there we saw martians attacking Howrah at night in their golden suits

Something similar to previous one.



Sunday, June 12, 2011

A few clicks from my roof


Ray of hope in Prison of Darkness


My bed.. 







Path of Thorns


Silhouette