Growing Up

I picked up the habit of reading when I was 10. I still reminisce those days when I used to be obsessed with Phantom, Mandrake and Bahadur – Indrajal Comics, which used to get published once a week. Every Wednesday I used to get up early in the morning waiting for the newspaperman to deliver my comics – my most prized possession. And then, hiding under the quilt at night with a torch light, I read and re-read all the stories; dreaming myself to be among the pygmies in the jungles of Africa.

And then came the days of Tintin, Nancy Drew and Enid Blyton. I picked up writing and wrote my own series of “Fantastic Six” and “Magnificent Seven”. Playing Hardy Boys was my favorite game as I explored the dilapidated buildings across the streets with a hope of adventure. I never came across the shabby mystery man or the crooked witch. I was still in my early teens fantasizing that one-day I will become Sherlock Holmes and John, my best friend would become my biddable assistant, Dr. Watson. I borrowed a bunch of Tintin comics from my friends and never returned them – I enjoyed playing the role of Captain Haddock; I had my own ship on the terrace.

As I entered junior high school, my uncle brought me a series of Classics from “The Count of Monte Cristo”, “Rebecca” to “Little Women” and “The Hunchback from Notre Dome”. I wept so much for David Copperfield that I felt miserable whenever I saw an orphan in the streets. I almost planned for an escape in the summers while I meticulously built a boat out of straw and wood in my backyard – I just finished reading “Huckleberry Finn” from the school library. On summer evenings, when the lights went off and the entire town was shrouded in darkness – I used to take the hurricane lamp to the balcony with my storybook and gaze at the stars and led my imagination take me to lands where I could never go –D’Artagnan in the streets of Paris, Jim Corbett in the jungles of Kumaon or Tom Sawyer on a boat in the waters of Mississippi.

How “growing up” would have been without Jules Verne or H.G. Wells?