Enlightenment can be achieved through a number of ways, and reading books is one of them
WHEN I was a child, I was not fond of books. Normally, a child get influenced by the environment in which he is brought up. Those days there weren’t many books in my house that would have grabbed my attention. This does not mean that my house was completely devoid of books. My father was a graduate, who had an enormous collection of books on economics and law. But there were no storybooks to capture my attention.
This was one of the reasons that I never took a shine to my father’s books. His hectic office schedule made him unable to stop the books from getting dusty.
Having said that, I must confess that among those books a thick one, for some reason, became the centre of my attention. It was an old Urdu to English dictionary published by Kitabistan. It had not been kept well because it was an old edition used by many people. My father had purchased this dictionary from a friend when he was preparing for the CSS examination. I found a strange kind of joy in flipping through its pages.
Despite the fact that I could not comprehend this old dictionary, I felt greatly drawn towards it. Later on, when my parents enrolled me in a nearby school, its usefulness dawned on me. It was great joy going through this voluminous book in search of new and exciting words. Whenever I found some difficulty in finding out the meaning of any word, I would look up in that book. In addition to that, I would consult my father who was more than willing to help me out in this regard as he wanted me to be proficient in English language. Time moved at a rapid pace and I reached higher classes in school. I still vividly remember that when I was in eighth grade, I was made to read the editorials of an English daily by my father. I had to go through this excruciating exercise of reading the editorials that were beyond my comprehension. At the time, I hated that seemingly dull activity.
It is now that I realize the importance of that seemingly dull activity. It immensely helped me to understand English language and its rich vocabulary. My first two years in college were a fiasco in terms of academic record. All I did in these two years was to play cricket. By that time, I had only studied the books prescribed in the course. So there was no question of browsing through any general book. And when there was time to graduate things suddenly changed. I somehow started frequenting my college library and another public library. Many books that I read at that time were beyond my understanding. Still, I tried to study as many books as possible with religious devotion. Luckily, I enjoyed the privilege of being a student of an erudite teacher Dr Tahir Kamran, who used to inculcate in his students a great passion for acquiring knowledge.
Though his subject was European history, he would shed light on almost all subjects under the sun with equal mastery. Dr Tahir Kamran incessantly drummed into every student’s ears the importance of books in life. As a result, even a cretin like me got hooked on to books. When my college library failed to slake my appetite, I started visiting the Sunday book bazaar at Anarkali.
I also purchased a host of other books that were displayed on the footpath outside the Oriental College Lahore.
One day, while visiting the Anarkali bazaar, I tapped another market of books, called the Partap street. I frequented this street so much that all the shopkeepers started behaving like a friend to me, particularly Muhammad Naeem of Time Books. Thanks to this street, my study room is crammed with books like One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Delhi by Khuswant Singh, Lessons of History by Will Durant, A History of God by Karen Armstrong, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, and Battle of Ideas in Pakistan by Sibte Hasan.
To get hold of some exciting new Urdu books, a visit to the Mozang road — where publishers like Fiction House, Book Home, Takhleeqat, and Nigarshat have their shops — never disappoints you. My hunt for Urdu books on poetry, humour, fiction and other genres took me to the Mozang road many a time. These bookstores offer 50 per cent discount on their own publications and 40 per cent on all the other books. So, in the span of three years I succeeding in having a gigantic collection of books.
My obsession with books often turns me into a pauper. Whatever pocket money I get is spent on buying new books. And I never stop doing that because books are the best companion.
In the course of my life I have learnt a lot from books. But in this respect I also have a confession to make: due to insufficient time, I have not been able to look after these books properly. I will try and rectify that in the future.
