Boarded the train from Surbiton and found a window seat. Suddenly my mind was transported to those years of childhood bliss. Its ironical, those days were never considered blissful then. Its funny how the days gone by always look better after they have gone.

My mind wandered back to some particular instances when I was in school and used to be forced to get up early morning at 5 am (with a cold water sprinkle on the face from Dad)to study. There were times when I used to be pissed thoroughly and as a rebellion I used to hide a novel in the textbook and read the novel instead.It was so visual that I could actually remember the entire scene....my bed, the mosquito net, me inside my blanket propped up against a bolster positioned such that I am facing my mother cooking in the kitchen, so that she cd only see the text book an dnot the novel inside. Thankfully my results did not suffer , so mom , dad never realised what their son used to be doing all those cold wintery mornings.....

Reading novels was my craze.....ofcourse I had not graduated to quality reading aka non fiction...but the favourites were hardy boys, alfred hitchcock- 3 investigators (for years I thought the writer of the 3 investigator series was the same Hollywood -Alfred Hitchcock), Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie etc. Obviously did not have money then, so had to rely on friends and the school library to get hold of these reads.

I can still remember the excitement when the school library used to get its new haul of these series and how we used to have fights to get first access to these books.I remember sitting on the temple steps (the kali temple in Aundh Road) and trying to finish a bood, since Dad was dead against me reading novels as he felt it affected valuable study time.Thankfully that habit persisted and am I glad about that.

Nothing can beat curling up with a good book with some hot pakodas and a huge cup of elaichi chai.