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My Library

Forty four years ago in 1963 when I joined ERDL at Poona, I purchased my first novel, perhaps. My colleague then, Mr. Sonone and I used to go to a book shop in Camp, Poona to purchase English books. First we purchased all the books by Ian Fleming (James Bond series), one by one as they were being published, starting from Dr. No. Then it was Alistair MacLean, and other authors like Arthur Hailey, Robert Ludlum, Frederick Forsyth, Robin Cook, Tom Clancy, Colin Forbes, and Jack Higgins. My collection of books began growing.

When my sons ARUN, ASHOK, and ARVIND got employed in late 1990s, they too started purchasing books on their own – John Grisham, Jeffrey Archer, JK Rowling (Harry Potter) and other new authors came into our house. When they married their wives Gayathri, Neeraja, and Krithika also added to the collection.

From the very first day, I had this desire of having a book shelf where I can arrange the books in an orderly fashion. We were storing these books in a jumbo-sized suitcase all along. I was “envying” Ramamurthy Athimber who has a wonderful collection of books in English and Tamil, all neatly arranged – my wish was to emulate him, and have a “library” of sort!

Two months ago Vijaya and I went to Royapettah High Road to check on the book shelves and we found one to our liking in one shop. I modified the specifications a bit (e.g. in stead of 2 shelves I made it three). But, I couldn’t purchase the same as we went to Mumbai, Thiruvananthapuram etc.

Ten days back Arvind and Krithika went to that furniture shop, ordered for this book shelf, among others. The bookshelf was delivered last night at 10 PM.

This morning (7th Nov 2007) I cleaned and dusted it and started arranging the books. No prizes for guessing whose book went inside first and who kept it first. (Aditi has a collection of about 10 books, already).

Welcome to visit our Library.

rajappa
12:30 on 07 Nov 2007

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