A delightful journey into the joys and challenges of joining a book club, exploring new authors, genres, and the camaraderie of fellow bibliophiles.
Reading is basically a solitary pursuit. It is an intimate connection between the words on the page and their interaction with your imagination as you explore new worlds and ideas together. As a boy I had very few friends who shared my passion for reading. I used to be a loner, hiding from the mundane realities of the world in the wondrous realms of my imagination, lost in books borrowed from the library.
In college I fell in with a few like minded bookworms, friends who shared a love for books and a passion for reading . Alas, this brief halcyon period soon passed and I found myself in Delhi, working for Big Brother and lost among mounds of dusty files, one cog in the vast machine called ‘The Bureaucracy’.
In Delhi, I soon discovered that most of my colleagues had absolutely no interest in sampling the pleasures of the written word. They had enough of it at work, murdering the language in ‘official’ correspondence on thousands of files. Reading for pleasure is an anathema to those working in a Government office. Words are meant to confuse and terrify, to bring home the awful majesty of the Bureaucracy to a populace quivering in abject terror.
Expanding horizons
Stephen King, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe and others of their ilk may have been part of the Bureaucracy in another life and they would have carried those questionable skills over to this life, where they would have honed the skills still further and used it to make a lucrative career for themselves, scaring people out of their wits. Maybe I exaggerate a bit, but a lot of what I just said has a grounding in truth.
Bureaucrats seldom discuss literary works in their spare time. Conversations usually revolve around the next Pay Commission, whether the DA allowance is going to increase by a percentage point this time around, the cost of real estate in Delhi and which unfortunate was in line to be the fifth husband of the reigning Bollywood diva.
Bad mouthing Bosses was also an ever popular topic, one that helped expand your vocabulary (usually with words consisting of four alphabets ). Thus, for thirty years in Delhi I remained a solitary reader, trying to insulate myself from the outside world within the confines of my book filled home.
Post voluntary retirement and return to Kerala I had lots of leisure and peace of mind, time to blissfully sink into the ocean of books undisturbed by Parliament Questions, contempt cases in the Supreme Court and preparation of briefs for ignorant politicians. I had met some like-minded bibliophiles on the Internet and did occasionally interact with them but most of my time was spent alone with books.
The chaos and charm of club meeting
In March 2023 a close friend and book lover told me about a Book Club in Cochin where book lovers discussed books on WhatsApp and Facebook and even had a physical meeting every month. She suggested I join the club which I did, eager to meet people who shared my passion.
After the initial interactions on WhatsApp I attended my first meeting at Café Coffee Day in Kaloor, Kochi. I was taken aback by the fact that most of the ten attendees at the meeting were much younger than myself. I felt like Methuselah at a meeting of kindergarten kids. However, it soon became evident that those present were genuine book lovers. Most of our tastes were different but the common thread binding us was the love of reading.
I became a regular, travelling from Irinjalakuda to Kochi every month to attend the meetings which were held every Second Saturday. It became a red letter day in my Calendar, the day I looked forward to every month. The attendance at the meetings gradually increased every month and now we have between 20 to 25 people, on an average, attending the meetings. T
he age of members is a broad spectrum ranging between 25 and eighty. My reading horizons expanded considerably as I delved into genres and sampled authors recommended by fellow members. Many of these authors , themes and genres were ones I would not have normally touched with a barge pole. Interactions with my friends at the book club, both at meetings and on WhatsApp made me realise that the world of books extended way beyond my already extensive reading boundaries .
I have also done my bit in getting members to sample authors I love but most of them have never heard of. I’ve even subtly managed to corrupt a few by enticing them to read comics and graphic novels. Meetings can get quite heated and vocal at times and the decibel levels are normally definitely over safe levels. Luckily the meeting venues have not been in proximity to hospitals or Government Offices or the whole bunch of us could land before a Magistrate charged with ‘disturbing the peace’. In conclusion, it’s clear that this is a club for crazy people. Crazy about books, that is.
