Anatomy of a Reader

In all my mortal years, the one question that has followed me everywhere is, “Why do you love reading?” and I’ve never known how to answer that. It’s the same as asking why do you love a person; it’s because, you just do. It’s not just one reason, but thousands. Reasons you can fill parchments with, reasons that can transform minutes to moons.

When I was 5 years old, my father gifted me my first fairy tale. I stayed past my bedtime reading about the ill-treated girl who found her magic slippers and her happily-ever-after, and since then, there was no looking back. Stories became my home and my escape. When all the other kids were attending soccer games and ballet lessons, I was devouring pages and pages of The Golden Trio’s adventures and Ruskin Bond’s mountain escapades.

Words capture me, words liberate me. I stand in front of my bookshelf and admire it for hours. I set the trolley overflowing with new releases in spite of already having unread titles. I wish to bottle up the smell of old pages and sprinkle them across the mundane Muggle world. I disagree that Classics are more important than Young Adult Fiction, because that is a fight between my two families and I’m not ready to pick a side. I refuse to choose between J.K. Rowling and J.D. Salinger. I’m dejected because Hans Hubermann deserved to live. I’m disgruntled with Eleanor and Park’s unfinished letters. I’m distressed over The Little Prince’s journey coming to an end. If you were to rip my heart open, you’d find words swimming in the galaxy of hardcovers and paperbacks through the lanes of romance and dystopia and among the bookmarks and sticky notes, with my tombstone reading, ‘Just one more chapter.’

We readers are peculiar beings. We’re the ones with the creepy smiles on the subway, brooding over that twisted ending. We’re the ones in the cafe too lost to notice that our tea has gone cold. We’re the ones with the slightly heavier bags because that book just had to be fit in. We can sit beside you, and still be far away. We’re in the crowd, and yet distinct; our crooked glasses and fandom halos accompanying us. Our big books consume our tiny universe, and we carry our favourite stories in between the dust jackets of our souls. We wish phone calls would replace the continents between us and our beloved authors. We never forget the characters we befriended; the characters who became our friends and mirror and confidante. We’ve had our hearts conquered by Mr. Darcy and Augustus Waters in ways we’ll never recover from. We’ve fallen down the rabbit hole and taken the Hogwarts Express and discovered the magic wardrobe. We’ve seen reality and fiction mingle. We’ve known too much to trust easily, and read too much to lose hope. We’re the daydreamers, the believers, the survivors, the chosen ones.

We, are the readers, and this is our story.