The Reader I Meant to Be

Pages from Life

My father handed me a book once — not with a recommendation, more like a quiet instruction. It was a J. Krishnamurti. I read enough of it to feel something shift, but not enough to understand what. I told myself I would return to it later in life, when I was ready for that kind of depth. I am 48 now, yet to pick it up again, though I see newer editions being promoted on social media.

That gap, between the reader I intended to become and the one I actually am, is something I have been sitting with lately.

I was a reluctant convert. Dad was well-read. My sister took to books naturally. Mom moved between Tamil novels and English magazines with ease. Watching them — or being nudged by dad to read some article or chapter — mostly kept me at arm’s length. We had two TV channels. I had just enough outdoors time to collect a few minor injuries and stay out of serious trouble.

What helped was having a library subscription during our Madras years. I started with Famous Five, a couple of Nancy Drews. I can’t honestly say I enjoyed either. It felt like floating — somewhere between following the pace of the book and mindless page turning. Even then, and this has stayed with me, I rarely retained plot points after finishing. My sister found this endlessly amusing.

The daily newspaper was another reluctant habit. The Hindu was simply the paper at home — no discussion, no alternatives. I was expected to at least skim the headlines. There were long stretches about GATT that meant nothing to me. But something shifted slowly. Once I found my footing with a few topics, writers like P. Sainath became ones I actively looked forward to.

Around 1997, back in Chennai with the luxury of time, I went deeper. I worked through authors back to back — Ayn Rand, Agatha Christie, Michael Crichton. When I found a writer I liked, I cleared their shelf before moving on. It was also around this time that dad introduced me to J. Krishnamurti, and to Dominic Lapierre, whose writing about historical events remains among my favourites. I think I understood the weight of what Gandhi carried more clearly after reading Freedom at Midnight than from anything I had studied in school. City of Joy brought me to Mother Teresa in a way no biography had managed, and that appreciation has stayed.

Around 2000, The Lord of the Rings was voted book of the century. I got hold of the paperback — 1,200 pages, small font. I was running a pace of roughly one 300-400 page book a week at that point. LOTR took two months. By then I was also spending serious time with The Hindu every day, religious about the editorial and Op-Ed pages even when the policy arguments went over my head.

Reading kept pace into my corporate years. A friend’s home library helped. So did nudges from a couple of colleagues. Night shifts meant reading was mostly pre-sleep and weekends. Kindle hadn’t arrived in India yet. A book a week was harder to hold. But the habit was alive. A few quiet compliments about how I wrote and communicated were filed away, more instinctively than deliberately.

Then the slide happened. I won’t blame it entirely on smartphones — it was more of a slow pile-on. Increased travel during start-up years. A home library that couldn’t grow past a certain point. A to-read list that exploded the moment social media started surfacing recommendations. A growing conviction that I should read fewer things more deeply rather than chase bestseller lists. Career anxieties. The twins. Streaming platforms making a not-so-subtle entry.

The habit didn’t disappear, it narrowed. And I kept negotiating with myself — next month, next year, when things settle.

In 2026, the to-read list is larger than it has ever been. The main feeds now are The Seen and the Unseen podcast and the Life Lessons cohort. I am trying to filter the recommendations down to areas I want to engage with seriously — not just finish a book, but perhaps write to the author, or respond to an argument in writing.

There is a map of the Song of Ice and Fire world I want on one of the walls at home — as large as I can find. I watched the series before I read the books, which some would consider the wrong order. I still want the special edition volumes. That ambition sits comfortably alongside the J. Krishnamurti I haven’t returned to and the Gurucharan Das I keep meaning to re-read. A reading life, I suppose, is as much about what you carry forward as what you finish.

Dad gave me the habit even when I resisted it. I am still working out how to honour that properly.